CALVINISM: 


AN  ADDRESS  DELIVERED  AT  ST.  ANDREW'S, 


MARCH  17,  1871. 


BT 

JAMES  ANTHONY  FROUDE,  M.  A. 

KECTOR  OF  THE  UNIVERSITY,  AUTHOR  OF  "HISTORY  OF  ENGLAND,"  ETC. 


NEW    YORK: 

CHARLES   SCRIBNER   AND   COMPANY. 
1871. 


EIVEESIDE,  CAMBRIDGE: 

STEREOTYPED     AND     PRINTED 
fl.  0.  HOCQHION  AND   COMPANY. 


CALVINISM. 


GENTLEMEN,  —  While  I  am  unwilling  to  allow  the  tem- 
porary connection  between  us  to  come  to  an  end  without 
once  more  addressing  you,  I  find  it  difficult  to  select  a  sub- 
ject on  which  it  may  be  worth  your  while  to  listen  to  what 
I  have  to  say.  You  know  yourselves  better  than  I  can  tell 
you  the  purposes  for  which  you  are  assembled  in  this  place. 
Many  of  you  will  have  formed  honorable  resolutions  to  ac- 
quit yourselves  bravely  and  manfully,  both  in  your  term  of 
preparation  here,  and  in  the  life  which  you  are  about  to 
enter,  —  resolutions  which  would  make  exhortations  of 
mine  to  you  to  persevere  appear  unmeaning  and  almost  im- 
pertinent. You  are  conscious  in  detail  of  the  aims  which 
you  have  set  before  yourselves,  —  you  have,  perhaps, 
already  chosen  the  professions  which  you  mean  to  follow, 
and  are  better  aware  than  I  can  be  of  the  subjects  which 
you  have  to  master  if  you  mean  to  pursue  them  success- 
fully. I  should  show  myself  unworthy  of  the  honor  which 
you  conferred  on  me  in  my  election  as  your  Rector  were  I 
to  waste  your  time  with  profitless  generalities.  I  have  de- 
cided, after  due  consideration,  to  speak  to  you  of  things 
which,  though  not  immediately  connected  with  the  Univer- 
sity of  St.  Andrew's,  or  any  other  University,  yet  concern 
us  all  more  nearly  than  any  other  matter  in  the  world  ;  and 
though  I  am  not  vain  enough  to  suppose  that  I  can  throw 
new  material  light  upon  them,  yet  where  there  is  so  much 
division  and  uncertainty,  the  sincere  convictions  of  any 
man,  if  openly  expressed,  may  be  of  value  as  factors  in  the 


4  Address  to  the 

problem.  At  all  events,  I  shall  hope  that  the  hour  for 
which  I  shall  ask  you  to  attend  to  me  will  not  have  passed 
away  without  leaving  some  definite  trace  behind  it. 

I  may  say  at  once  that  I  am  about  to  travel  over  serious 
ground.  I  shall  not  trespass  on  theology,  though  I  must 
go  near  the  frontiers  of  it.  I  shall  give  you  the  conclusions 
which  I  have  been  led  to  form  upon  a  series  of  spiritual 
phenomena  which  have  appeared  successively  in  different 
ages  of  the  world,  —  which  have  exercised  the  most  re- 
markable influence  on  the  character  and  history  of  man- 
kind, and  have  left  their  traces  nowhere  more  distinctly 
than  in  this  Scotland  where  we  now  stand. 

Every  one  here  present  must  have  become  familiar  in 
late  years  with  the  change  of  tone  throughout  Europe  and 
America  on  the  subject  of  Calvinism.  After  being  ac- 
cepted for  two  centuries  in  all  Protestant  countries  as  the 
final  account  of  the  relations  between  man  and  his  Maker, 
it  has  come  to  be  regarded  by  liberal  thinkers  as  a  system 
of  belief  incredible  in  itself,  dishonoring  to  its  object,  and  as 
intolerable  as  it  has  been  itself  intolerant.  The  Catholics 
whom  it  overthrew  take  courage  from  the  philosophers,  and 
assail  it  on  the  same  ground.  To  represent  man  as  sent 
into  the  world  under  a  curse,  as  incurably  wicked,  —  wicked 
by  the  constitution  of  his  flesh,  and  wicked  by  eternal  de- 
cree, —  as  doomed,  unless  exempted  by  special  grace  which 
he  cannot  merit,  or  by  any  effort  of  his  own  obtain,  to  live 
in  sin  while  he  remains  on  earth,  and  to  be  eternally  miser- 
able when  he  leaves  it,  —  to  represent  him  as  born  unable 
to  keep  the  commandments,  yet  as  justly  liable  to  everlast- 
ing punishment  for  breaking  them,  is  alike  repugnant  to 
reason  and  to  conscience,  and  turns  existence  into  a  hideous 
nightmare.  To  deny  the  freedom  of  the  will  is  to  make 
morality  impossible.  To  tell  men  that  they  cannot  help 
themselves  is  to  fling  them  into  recklessness  and  despair. 
To  what  purpose  the  effort  to  be  virtuous  when  it  is  an 
effort  which  is  foredoomed  to  fail,  —  when  those  that  are 


University  of  St.  Andrew's.  5 

saved  are  saved  by  no  effort  of  their  own,  and  confess  them- 
selves the  worst  of  sinners,  even,  when  rescued  from  the 
penalties  of  sin ;  and  those  that  are  lost  are  lost  by  an  ever- 
lasting sentence  decreed  against  them  before  they  were 
born  ?  How  are  we  to  call  the  Ruler  who  laid  us  under 
this  iron  code  by  the  name  of  Wise,  or  Just,  or  Merciful, 
when  we  ascribe  principles  of  action  to  Him  which  in  a  hu- 
man father  we  should  call  preposterous  and  monstrous  ? 

The  discussion  of  these  strange  questions  has  been  pur- 
sued at  all  times  with  inevitable  passion,  and  the  crisis 
uniformly  has  been  a  drawn  battle.  The  Arminian  has 
entangled  the  Calvinist,  the  Calvinist  has  entangled  the  Ar- 
minian, in  a  labyrinth  of  contradictions.  The  advocate  of 
free  will  appeals  to  conscience  and  instinct,  —  to  an  a  priori 
sense  of  what  ought  in  equity  to  be.  The  necessitarian 
falls  back  upon  the  experienced  reality  of  facts.  It  is  true, 
and  no  argument  can  gainsay  it,  that  men  are  placed  in  the 
world  unequally  favored,  both  in  inward  disposition  and  out- 
ward circumstances.  Some  children  are  born  with  tempera- 
ments which  make  a  life  of  innocence  and  purity  natural  and 
easy  to  them ;  others  are  born  with  violent  passions,  or  even 
with  distinct  tendencies  to  evil,  inherited  from  their  ances- 
tors, and  seemingly  unconquerable,  —  some  are  constitu- 
tionally brave,  others  are  constitutionally  cowards,  —  some 
are  born  in  religious  families,  and  are  carefully  educated 
and  watched  over  ;  others  draw  their  first  breath  in  an  at- 
mosphere of  crime,  and  cease  to  inhale  it  only  when  they 
pass  into  their  graves.  Only  a  fourth  part  of  mankind  are 
born  Christians.  The  remainder  never  hear  the  name  of 
Christ  except  as  a  reproach.  The  Chinese  and  the  Japanese 
—  we  may  almost  say  every  weaker  race  with  whom  we  have 
come  in  contact  —  connect  it  only  with  the  forced  intrusion 
of  strangers  whose  behavior  among  them  has  served  ill  to 
recommend  their  creed.  These  are  facts  which  no  casuistry 
can  explain  away.  And  if  we  believe  at  all  that  the  world 
is  governed  by  a  conscious  and  intelligent  Being,  we  must 


6  Address  to  the 

believe  also,  however  we  can  reconcile  it  with  our  own 
ideas,  that  these  anomalies  have  not  arisen  by  accident,  but 
have  been  ordered  of  purpose  and  design. 

No  less  noticeable  is  it  that  the  materialistic  and  the  met- 
aphysical philosophers  deny  as  completely  as  Calvinism 
what  is  popularly  called  Free  Will.  Every  effect  has  its 
cause.  In  every  action  the  will  is  determined  by  the  mo- 
tive which  at  the  moment  is  operating  most  powerfully 
upon  it.  When  we  do  wrong,  we  are  led  away  by  temp- 
tation. If  we  overcome  our  temptation,  we  overcome  it 
either  because  we  foresee  inconvenient  consequences,  and 
the  certainty  of  future  pains  is  stronger  than  the  present 
pleasure ;  or  else  because  we  prefer  right  to  wrong,  and 
our  desire  for  good  is  greater  than  our  desire  for  indul- 
gence. It  is  impossible  to  conceive  a  man,  when  two 
courses  are  open  to  him,  choosing  that  which  he  least  de- 
sires. He  may  say  that  he  can  do  what  he  dislikes  because 
it  is  his  duty.  Precisely  so.  His  desire  to  do  his  duty  is 
a  stronger  motive  with  him  than  the  attraction  of  present 
pleasure. 

Spinoza,  from  entirely  different  premises,  came  to  the 
same  conclusion  as  Mr.  Mill  or  Mr.  Buckle,  and  can  find  no 
better  account  of  the  situation  of  man  than  in  the  illustra- 
tion of  St.  Paul,  "  Hath  not  the  potter  power  over  the  clay, 
to  make  one  vessel  to  honor  and  another  to  dishonor  ?  " 

If  Arminianism  most  commends  itself  to  our  feelings, 
Calvinism  is  nearer  to  the  facts,  however  harsh  and  forbid- 
ding those  facts  may  seem. 

I  have  no  intention,  however,  of  entangling  myself  or 
you  in  these  controversies.  As  little  shall  I  consider 
whether  men  have  done  wisely  in  attempting  a  doctrinal 
solution  of  problems,  the  conditions  of  which  are  so  imper- 
fectly known.  The  moral  system  of  the  universe  is  like  a 
document  written  in  alternate  ciphers,  which  change  from 
line  to  line.  "We  read  a  sentence,  but  at  the  next  our  key 
fails  us  ;  we  see  that  there  is  something  written  there,  but 


University  of  St.  Andrew's,  7 

if  we  guess  at  it  we  are  guessing  in  the  dark.  It  seems 
more  faithful,  more  becoming,  in  beings  such  as  we  are,  to 
rest  in  the  conviction  of  our  own  inadequacy,  and  confine 
ourselves  to  those  moral  rules  for  our  lives  and  actions  on 
which,  so  far  as  they  concern  ourselves,  we  are  left  in  no 
uncertainty  at  all. 

At  present,  at  any  rate,  we  are  concerned  with  an  aspect 
of  the  matter  entirely  different.  I  am  going  to  ask  you  to 
consider  how  it  came  to  pass  that  if  Calvinism  is  indee4  the 
hard  and  unreasonable  creed  which  modern  enlightenment 
declares  it  to  be,  it  has  p'ossessed  such  singular  attractions 
in  past  times  for  some  of  the  greatest  men  that  ever  lived ; 
and  how  —  being,  as  we  are  told,  fatal  to  morality,  because 
it  denies  free  will  —  the  first  symptom  of  its  operation, 
wherever  it  established  itself,  was  to  obliterate  the  distinc- 
tion between  sins  and  crimes,  and  to  make  the  moral  law 
the  rule  of  life  for  States  as  well  as  persons.  I  shall  ask 
you,  again,  why,  if  it  be  a  creed  of  intellectual  servitude, 
it  was  able  to  inspire  and  sustain  the  bravest  efforts  ever 
made  by  man  to  break  the  yoke  of  unjust  authority.  When 
all  else  has  failed,  —  when  patriotism  has  covered  its  face, 
and  human  courage  has  broken  down,  —  when  intellect  has 
yielded,  as  Gibbon  says,  "  with  a  smile  or  a  sigh,"  content 
to  philosophize  in  the  closet,  and  abroad  worship  with  the 
vulgar,  —  when  emotion,  and  sentiment,  and  tender  imagi- 
native piety  have  become  the  handmaids  of  superstition, 
and  have  dreamt  themselves  into  forgetfulness  that  there  is 
any  difference  between  lies  and  truth,  —  the  slavish  form  of 
belief  called  Calvinism,  in  one  or  other  of  its  many  forms, 
has  borne  ever  an  inflexible  front  to  illusion  and  mendacity, 
and  has  preferred  rather  to  be  ground  to  powder  like  flint 
than  to  bend  before  violence  or  melt  under  enervating  temp- 
tation. 

It  is  enough  to  mention  the  name  of  William  the  Silent, 
of  Luther,  —  for  on  the  points  of  which  I  am  speaking 
Luther  was  one  with  Calvin,  —  of  your  own  Knox  and 


8  Address  to  the 

Andrew  Melville  and  the  Regent  Murray,  of  Coligny,  of  our 
English  Cromwell,  of  Milton,  of  John  Bunyan.  These 
were  men  possessed  of  all  the  qualities  which  give  nobility 
and  grandeur  to  human  nature,  —  men  whose  life  was  as 
upright  as  their  intellect  was  commanding  and  their  public 
aims  untainted  with  selfishness ;  unalterably  just  where 
duty  required  them  to  be  stern,  but  with  the  tenderness  of  a 
woman  in  their  hearts  ;  frank,  true,  cheerful,  humorous,  as 
unlike  sour  fanatics  as  it  is  possible  to  imagine  any  one,  and 
able  in  some  way  to  sound  the  key-note  to  which  every  brave 
and  faithful  heart  in  Europe  instinctively  vibrated. 

This  is  the  problem.  Grapes  do  not  grow  on  bramble- 
bushes.  Illustrious  natures  do  not  form  themselves  upon 
narrow  and  cruel  theories.  Spiritual  life  is  full  of  apparent 
paradoxes.  When  St.  Patrick  preached  the  Gospel  on 
Tarah  Hill  to  Leoghaire,  the  Irish  king,  the  Druids  and  the 
wise  men  of  Ireland  shook  their  heads.  "  Why,"  asked  the 
king,  "  does  what  the  cleric  preaches  seem  so  dangerous  to 
you  ?  "  "  Because,"  was  the  remarkable  answer,  "  because 
he  preaches  repentance,  and  the  law  of  repentance  is  such 
that  a  man  shall  say, '  I  may  commit  a  thousand  crimes,  and 
if  I  repent  I  shall  be  forgiven,  and  it  will  be  no  worse  with 
me :  therefore  I  will  continue  to  sin.' "  The  Druids  ar- 
gued logically,  but  they  drew  a  false  inference  notwithstand- 
ing. The  practical  effect  of  a  belief  is  the  real  test  of  its 
soundness.  Where  we  find  a  heroic  life  appearing  as  the 
uniform  fruit  of  a  particular  mode  of  opinion,  it  is  childish 
to  argue  in  the  face  of  fact  that  the  result  ought  to  have 
been  different. 

The  question  which  I  have  proposed,  however,  admits  of 
a  reasonable  answer.  I  must  ask  you  only  to  accompany 
me  on  a  somewhat  wide  circuit  in  search  of  it. 

There  seems,  in  the  first  place,  to  lie  in  all  men,  in  pro- 
portion to  the  strength  of  their  understanding,  a  conviction 
that  there  is  in  all  human  things  a  real  order  and  purpose, 
notwithstanding  the  chaos  in  which  at  times  they  seem  to  be 


University  of  St.  Andrew's.  9 

involved.  Suffering  scattered  blindly  without  remedial  pur- 
pose or  retributive  propriety,  —  good  and  evil  distributed 
with  the  most  absolute  disregard  of  moral  merit  or  demerit, 
—  enormous  crimes  perpetrated  with  impunity,  or  vengeance 
when  it  comes  falling  not  on  the  guilty,  but  the  innocent,  — 

"  Desert  a  beggar  born, 
And  needy  nothing  trimmed  in  jollity,"  — 

these  phenomena  present,  generation  after  generation,  the 
same  perplexing  and  even  maddening  features ;  and  with- 
out an  illogical,  but  none  the  less  a  positive  certainty  that 
things  are  not  as  they  seem,  —  that,  in  spite  of  appearance, 
there  is  justice  at  the  heart  of  them,  and  that,  in  the  work- 
ing out  of  the  vast  drama,  justice  will  assert  somehow  and 
somewhere  its  sovereign  right  and  power,  the  better  sort  of 
persons  would  find  existence  altogether  unendurable.  This 
is  what  the  Greeks  meant  by  the  'AvdyK-r)  or  destiny,  which 
at  the  bottom  is  no  other  than  moral  Providence.  Prome- 
theus chained  on  the  rock  is  the  counterpart  of  Job  on  his 
dunghill.  Torn  with  unrelaxing  agony,  the  vulture  with, 
beak  and  talons  rending  at  his  heart,  the  Titan  still  defies 
the  tyrant  at  whose  command  he  suffers,  and,  strong  in  con- 
scious innocence,  appeals  to  the  eternal  Motpa  which  will  do 
him  right  in  the  end.  The  Olympian  gods  were  cruel,  jeal- 
ous, capricious,  malignant ;  but  beyond  and  above  the 
Olympian  gods  lay  the  silent,  brooding,  everlasting  fate  of 
which  victim  and  tyrant  were  alike  the  instruments,  and 
which  at  last,  far  off,  after  ages  of  misery  it  might  be,  but 
still  before  all  was  over,  would  vindicate  the  sovereignty  of 
justice.  Full  as  it  may  be  of  contradictions  and  perplexi- 
ties, this  obscure  belief  lies  at  the  very  core  of  our  spiritual 
nature,  and  it  is  called  fate,  or  it  is  called  predestination,  ac- 
cording as  it  is  regarded  pantheistically  as  a  necessary  con- 
dition of  the  universe  or  as  the  decree  of  a  self-conscious 
being. 

Intimately  connected  with  this  belief,  and  perhaps  the 


10  Address  to  the 

feet  of  which  it  is  the  inadequate  expression,  is  the  existence 
in  nature  of  omnipresent  organic  laws,  penetrating  the  ma- 
terial world,  penetrating  the  moral  world  of  human  life  and 
society,  which  insist  on  being  obeyed  in  all  that  we  do  and 
handle,  —  which  we  cannot  alter,  cannot  modify,  —  which 
will  go  with  us,  and  assist  and  befriend  us,  if  Ave  recognize 
and  comply  with  them,  —  which  inexorably  make  them- 
selves felt  in  failure  and  disaster  if  we  neglect  or  attempt  to 
thwart  them.  Search  where  we  will  among  created  things, 
far  as  the  microscope  will  allow  the  eye  to  pierce,  we  find 
organization  everywhere.  Large  forms  resolve  themselves 
into  parts,  but  these  parts  are  but  organized  out  of  other 
parts,  down  so  far  as  we  can  see  into  infinity.  When  the 
plant  meets  with  the  conditions  which  agree  with  it,  it 
•thrives  ;  under  unhealthy  conditions,  it  is  poisoned  and  disin- 
tegrates. It  is  the  same  precisely  with  each  one  of  ourselves, 
whether  as  individuals  or  as  aggregated  into  associations, 
into  families,  into  nations,  into  institutions.  The  remotest 
fibre  of  human  action,  from  the  policy  of  empires  to  the 
most  insignificant  trifle  over  which  we  waste  an  idle  hour  or 
moment,  either  moves  in  harmony  with  the  true  law  of  our 
being,  or  is  else  at  discord  with  it.  A  king  or  a  parliament 
enacts  a  law,  and  we  imagine  we  are  creating  some  new 
regulation,  to  encounter  unprecedented  circumstances.  The 
law  itself  which  applied  to  these  circumstances  was  enacted 
from  eternity.  It  has  its  existence  independent  of  us.  and 
will  enforce  itself  either  to  reward  or  punish,  as  the  attitude 
which  we  assume  towards  it  is  wise  or  unwise.  Our  human 
laws  are  but  the  copies,  more  or  less  imperfect,  of  the 
eternal  laws  so  far  as  we  can  read  them,  and  either  succeed 
and  promote  our  welfare,  or  fail  and  bring  confusion  and 
disaster,  according  as  the  legislator's  insight  has  detected  the 
true  principle,  or  has  been  distorted  by  ignorance  or  self- 
ishness. 

And  these  laws  are  absolute,  inflexible,  irreversible ;  the 
steady  friends  of  the  wise  and  good,  the  eternal  enemies  of 


ity  of  St.  Andrew's.  11 

the  blockhead  and  the  knave.  No  Pope  can  dispense  with  a 
statute  enrolled  in  the  Chancery  of  Heaven,  or  popular  vote 
repeal  it.  The  discipline  is  a  stern  one,  and  many  a  wild 
endeavor  men  have  made  to  obtain  less  hard  conditions,  or 
imagine  them  other  than  they  are.  They  have  conceived 
the  rule  of  the  Almighty  to  be  like  the  rule  of  one  of  them- 
selves. They  have  fancied  that  they  could  bribe  or  appease 
Him,  —  tempt  Him  by  penance  or  pious  offering  to  suspend 
or  turn  aside  his  displeasure.  They  are  asking  that  his 
own  eternal  nature  shall  become  other  than  it  is.  One  thing 
only  they  can  do.  They  for  themselves,  by  changing  their 
own  courses,  can  make  the  law  which  they  have  broken 
thenceforward  their  friend.  Their  dispositions  and  nature 
will  revive  and  become  healthy  again  when  they  are  no 
longer  in  opposition  to  the  will  of  their  Maker.  This  is  the 
natural  action  of  what  we  call  repentance.  But  the  pen- 
alties of  the  wrongs  of  the  past  remain  unrepealed.  As  men 
have  sown  they  must  still  reap.  The  profligate  who  has 
ruined  his  health  or  fortune  may  learn  before  he  dies  that 
he  has  lived  as  a  fool,  and  may  recover  something  of  his 
peace  of  mind  as  he  recovers  his  understanding ;  but  no 
miracle  takes  away  his  paralysis,  or  gives  back  to  his  chil- 
dren the  bread  of  which  he  has  robbed  them.  He  may 
himself  be  pardoned,  but  the  consequences  of  his  acts 
remain. 

Once  more :  and  it  is  the  most  awful  feature  of  our 
condition.  The  laws  of  nature  are  general,  and  are  no  re- 
specters of  persons.  There  has  been  and  there  still  is  a 
clinging  impression  that  the  sufferings  of  men  are  the  results 
of  their  own  particular  misdeeds,  and  that  no  one  is  or  can 
be  punished  for  the  faults  of  others.  I  shall  not  dispute 
about  the  word  "  punishment."  "  The  fathers  have  eaten  sour 
grapes,"  said  the  Jewish  proverb,  "  and  the  children's  teeth 
are  set  on  edge."  So  said  Jewish  experience,  and  Ezekiel 
answered  that  these  words  should  no  longer  be  used  among 
them.  "  The  soul  that  sinneth,  it  shall  die."  Yes,  there  is  a 


12  Address  to  the 

promise  that  the  soul  shall  be  saved,  there  is  no  such  prom- 
ise for  the  body.  Every  man  is  the  architect  of  his  own 
character ;  and  if  to  the  extent  of  his  opportunities  he  has 
lived  purely,  nobly,  and  uprightly,  the  misfortunes  which 
may  fall  on  him  through  the  crimes  or  errors  of  other  men 
cannot  injure  the  immortal  part  of  him.  But  it  is  no  less 
true  that  we  are  made  dependent  one  upon  another  to  a 
degree  which  can  hardly  be  exaggerated.  The  winds  and 
waves  are  on  the  side  of  the  best  navigator,  —  the  seaman 
who  best  understands  them.  Place  a  fool  at  the  helm,  and 
crew  and  passengers  will  perish,  be  they  ever  so  innocent. 
The  Tower  of  Siloam  fell,  not  for  any  sins  of  the  eighteen 
who  were  crushed  by  it,  but  through  bad  mortar  probably, 
the  rotting  of  a  beam,  or  the  uneven  setting  of  the  founda- 
tions. The  persons  who  should  have  suffered,  according  to 
our  notion  of  distributive  justice,  were  the  ignorant  archi- 
tects or  masons  who  had  done  their  work  amiss.  But  the 
guilty  had  perhaps  long  been  turned  to  dust.  And  the  law 
of  gravity  brought  the  tower  down  at  its  own  time,  indiffer- 
ent to  the  persons  who  might  be  under  it. 

Now  the  feature  which  distinguishes  man  from  other  an- 
imals is  that  he  is  able  to  observe  and  discover  these  laws 
which  are  of  such  mighty  moment  to  him,  and  direct  his 
conduct  in  conformity  with  them.  The  more  subtle  may 
be  revealed  only  by  complicated  experience.  The  plainer 
and  more  obvious  —  among  those  especially  which  are 
called  moral  —  have  been  apprehended  among  the  higher 
races  easily  and  readily.  I  shall  not  ask  how  the  knowl- 
edge of  them  has  been  obtained,  whether  by  external  reve- 
lation, or  by  natural  insight,  or  by  some  other  influence 
working  through  human  faculties.  The  fact  is  all  that  we 
are  concerned  with,  that  from  the  earliest  times  of  which  we 
have  historical  knowledge  there  have  always  been  men  who 
have  recognized  the  distinction  between  the  nobler  and  baser 
parts  of  their  being.  They  have  perceived  that  if  they 
would  be  men,  and  not  beasts,  they  must  control  their  ani- 


University  of  St.  Andrew's.  13 

mal  passions,  prefer  truth  to  falsehood,  courage  to  coward- 
ice, justice  to  violence,  and  compassion  to  cruelty.  These 
are  the  elementary  principles  of  morality,  on  the  recogni- 
tion of  which  the  welfare  and  improvement  of  mankind  de- 
pend, and  human  history  has  been  little  more  than  a  record 
of  the  struggle  which  began  at  the  beginning  and  will  con- 
tinue to  the  end  between  the  few  who  have  had  ability  to 
see  into  th©  truth  and  loyalty  to  obey  it,  and  the  multitude 
who  by  evasion  or  rebellion  have  .hoped  to  thrive  in  spite 
of  it. 

Thus  we  see  that  in  the  better  sort  of  men  there  are  two 
elementary  convictions  ;  that  there  is  over  all  things  an  un- 
sleeping, inflexible,  all-ordering,  just  power,  and  that  this 
power  governs  the  world  by  laws  which  can  be  seen  in  their 
effects,  and  on  the  obedience  to  which,  and  on  nothing  else, 
human  welfare  depends. 

And  now  I  will  suppose  some  one  whose  tendencies  are 
naturally  healthy,  though  as  yet  no  special  occasion  shall 
have  roused  him  to  serious  thought,  growing  up  in  a  civil- 
ized community  where,  as  usually  happens,  a  compromise 
has  been  struck  between  vice  and  virtue,  where  a  certain 
difference  between  right  and  wrong  is  recognized  decently 
on  the  surface,  while  below  it  one  half  of  the  people  are 
rushing  steadily  after  the  thing  called  pleasure,  and  the 
other  half  laboring  in  drudgery  to  provide  the  means  of  it 
for  the  idle. 

Of  practical  justice  in  such  a  community  there  will  be 
exceedingly  little,  but  as  society  cannot  go  along  at  all 
without  paying  morality  some  outward  homage,  there  will 
of  course  be  an  established  religion,  —  an  Olympus,  a  Val- 
halla, or  some  system  of  a  theogony  or  theology,  with  tem- 
ples, priests,  liturgies,  public  confessions  in  one  form  or 
another  of  the  dependence  of  the  things  we  see  upon  what 
is  not  seen,  with  certain  ideas  of  duty  and  penalties  imposed 
for  neglect  of  it.  These  there  will  be,  and  also,  as  obedi- 
ence is  disagreeable  and  requires  abstinence  from  various 


14  Address  to  the 

indulgences,  there  will  be  contrivances  by  which  the  indul- 
gences can  be  secured  and  no  harm  come  of  it.  By  the  side 
of  the  moral  law  there  grows  up  a  law  of  ceremonial  observ- 
ance, to  which  is  attached  a  notion  of  superior  sanctity  and 
especial  obligation.  Morality,  though  not  at  first  disowned, 
is  slighted  as  comparatively  trivial.  Duty  in  the  high  sense 
comes  to  mean  religious  duty,  that  is  to  say,  the  attentive 
observance  of  certain  forms  and  ceremonies,  and  ijiese  forms 
and  ceremonies  come  into  collision  little  or  not  at  all  with 
ordinary  life,  and  ultimately  have  a  tendency  to  resolve 
themselves  into  payments  of  money. 

Thus  rises  what  is  called  idolatry.  I  do  not  mean  by 
idolatry  the  mere  worship  of  manufactured  images.  I  mean 
the  separation  between  practical  obligation,  and  new  moons 
and  sabbaths,  outward  acts  of  devotion,  or  formulas  of  par- 
ticular opinions.  It  is  a  state  of  things  perpetually  recur- 
ring ;  for  there  is  nothing,  if  it  would  only  act,  more  agree- 
able to  all  parties  concerned.  Priests  find  their  office 
magnified  and  their  consequence  increased.  Laymen  can  be 
in  favor  with  God  and  man,  so  priests  tell  them,  while  their 
enjoyments  or  occupations  are  in  no  way  interfered  with. 
The  mischief  is  that  the  laws  of  nature  remain  meanwhile 
unsuspended ;  and  all  the  functions  of  society  become  poi- 
soned through  neglect  of  them.  Religion,  which  ought  to 
have  been  a  restraint,  becomes  a  fresh  instrument  of  evil,  — 
to  the  imaginative  and  the  weak  a  contemptible  superstition, 
to  the  educated  a  mockery,  to  knaves  and  hypocrites  a  cloak 
of  iniquity,  to  all  alike  —  to  those  who  suffer  and  those  who 
seem  to  profit  by  it  —  a  lie  so  palpable  as  to  be  worse  than 
atheism  itself. 

There  comes  a  time  when  all  this  has  to  end.  The  over- 
indulgence of  the  few  is  the  over-penury  of  the  many.  In- 
justice begets  misery,  and  misery  resentment.  Something 
happens  perhaps,  —  some  unusual  oppression,  or  some  act 
of  religious  mendacity  especially  glaring.  Such  a  person  as 
I  am  supposing  asks  himself,  "  What  is  the  meaning  of  these 


University  of  St.  Andrew's.  15 

things  ?  "  His  eyes  are  opened.  Gradually  lie  discovers 
that  he  is  living  surrounded  with  falsehood,  drinking  lies 
like  water,  his  conscience  polluted,  his  intellect  degraded  by 
the  abominations  which  envelop  his  existence.  At  first  per- 
haps he  will  feel  most  keenly  for  himself.  He  will  not  sup- 
pose that  he  can  set  to  rights  a  world  that  is  out  of  joint, 
but  he  will  himself  relinquish  his  share  in  what  he  detests 
and  despises.  He  withdraws  into  himself.  If  what  others 
are  doing  and  saying  is  obviously  wrong,  then  he  has  to  ask 
himself  what  is  right,  and  what  is  the  true  purpose  of  his 
existence.  Light  breaks  more  clearly  on  him.  He  becomes 
conscious  of  impulses  towards  something  purer  and  higher 
than  he  has  yet  experienced  or  even  imagined.  Whence 
these  impulses  come  he  cannot  tell.  He  is  too  keenly  aware 
of  the  selfish  and  cowardly  thoughts  which  rise  up  to  mar 
and  thwart  his  nobler  aspirations  to  believe  that  they  can 
possibly  be  his  own.  If  he  conquers  his  baser  nature,  he 
feels  that  he  is  conquering  himself.  The  conqueror  and  the 
conquered  cannot  be  the  same  ;  and  he  therefore  concludes, 
not  in  vanity,  but  in  profound  humiliation  and  self-abase- 
ment, that  the  infinite  grace  of  God  and  nothing  else  is  res- 
cuing him  from  destruction.  He  is  converted,  as  the  theo- 
logians say.  He  sets  his  face  upon  another  road  from  that 
which  he  has  hitherto  travelled,  and  to  which  he  can  never 
return.  It  has  been  no  merit  of  his  own.  His  disposition 
will  rather  be  to  exaggerate  his  own  worthies  sness,  that  he 
may  exalt  the  more  what  has  been  done  for  him,  and  he 
resolves  thenceforward  to  enlist  himself  as  a  soldier  on  the 
side  of  truth  and  right,  and  to  have  no  wishes,  no  desires, 
no  opinions  but  what  the  service  of  his  Master  imposes. 
Like  a  soldier  he  abandons  his  freedom,  desiring  only  like 
a  soldier  to  act  and  speak  no  longer  as  of  himself,  but  as 
commissioned  from  some  supreme  authority.  In  such  a 
condition  a  man  becomes  magnetic.  There  are  epidemics 
of  nobleness  as  well  as  epidemics  of  disease ;  and  he  infects 
others  with  his  own  enthusiasm.  Even  in  the  most  corrupt 


16  Address  to  the 

ages  there  are  always  more  persons  than  we  suppose  who  in 
their  hearts  rebel  against  the  prevailing  fashions  ;  one  takes 
courage  from  another,  one  supports  another ;  communities 
form  themselves  with  higher  principles  of  action  and  purer 
intellectual  beliefs.  As  their  numbers  multiply  they  catch 
fire  with  a  common  idea  and  a  common  indignation,  and 
ultimately  burst  out  into  open  war  with  the  lies  and  iniqui- 
ties that  surround  them. 

I  have  been  describing  a  natural  process  which  has  re- 
peated itself  many  times  in  human  history,  and,  unless  the 
old  opinion  that  we  are  more  than  animated  clay,  and  that 
our  nature  has  nobler  affinities,  dies  away  into  a  dream, 
will  repeat  itself  at  recurring  intervals,  so  long  as  our  race 
survives  upon  the  planet. 

I  have  told  you  generally  what  I  conceive  to  be  our  real 
position,  and  the  administration  under  which  we  live ;  and 
I  have  indicated  how  naturally  the  conviction  of  the  truth 
would  tend  to  express  itself  in  the  moral  formulas  of  Cal- 
vinism. I  will  now  run  briefly  over  the  most  remarkable 
of  the  great  historical  movements  to  which  I  have  alluded ; 
and  you  will  see,  in  the  striking  recurrence  of  the  same  pe- 
culiar mode  of  thought  and  action,  an  evidence  that,  if  not 
completely  accurate,  it  must  possess  some  near  and  close 
affinity  with  the  real  fact.  I  will  take  first  the  example  with 
which  we  are  all  most  familiar,  —  that  of  the  chosen  people. 
I  must  again  remind  you  that  I  am  not  talking  of  theology. 
I  say  nothing  of  what  is  called  technically  revelation.  I  am 
treating  these  matters  as  phenomena  of  human  experience, 
the  lessons  of  which  would  be  identically  the  same  if  no 
revelation  existed. 

The  discovery  of  the  key  to  the  hieroglyphics,  the  exca- 
vations in  the  tombs,  the  investigations  carried  on  by  a 
series  of  careful  inquirers,  from  Belzoni  to  Lepsius,  into 
the  antiquities  of  the  Valley  of  the  Nile,  interpreting  and  in 
turn  interpreted  by  Manetho  and  Herodotus,  have  thrown 
a  light  in  many  respects  singularly  clear  upon  the  condition 


"University  of  St.  Andrew's.  17 

of  the  first  country  which,  so  far  as  histdry  can  tell,  suc- 
ceeded in  achieving  a  state  of  high  civilization.  From  a 
period  the  remoteness  of  which  it  is  unsafe  to  conjecture 
there  had  been  established  in  Egypt  an  elaborate  and  splen- 
did empire,  which,  though  it  had  not  escaped  revolutions, 
had  suffered  none  which  had  caused  organic  changes  there. 
It  had  strength,  wealth,  power,  coherence,  a  vigorous  mon- 
archy, dominant  and  exclusive  castes  of  nobles  and  priests, 
and  a  proletariat  of  slaves.  Its  cities,  temples,  and  monu- 
ments are  still,  in  their  ruin,  the  admiration  of  engineers 
and  the  despair  of  architects.  Original  intellectual  concep- 
tions inspired  its  public  buildings.  Saved  by  situation,  like 
China,  from  the  intrusion  of  barbarians,  it  developed  at 
leisure  its  own  ideas,  undisturbed  from  without ;  and  when 
it  becomes  historically  visible  to  us,  it  was  in  the  zenith  of 
its  glory.  The  habits  of  the  higher  classes  were  elaborately 
luxurious,  and  the  vanity  and  the  self-indulgence  of  the  few 
were  made  possible  —  as  it  is  and  always  must  be  where 
vanity  and  self-indulgence  exist  —  by  the  oppression  and 
misery  of  the  millions.  You  can  see  on  the  sides  of  the 
tombs  —  for  their  pride  and  their  pomp  followed  them  even 
in  their  graves  —  the  effeminate  patrician  of  the  court  of 
the  Pharaohs  reclining  in  his  gilded  gondola,  the  attendant 
eunuch  waiting  upon  him  with  the  goblet  or  plate  of  fruit, 
the  bevies  of  languishing  damsels  fluttering  round  him 
in  their  transparent  draperies.  Shakespeare's  Cleopatra 
might  have  sat  for  the  portrait  of  the  Potiphar's  wife  who 
tried  the  virtue  of  the  son  of  Jacob  :  — 

"  The  barge  she  sate  in,  like  a  burnished  throne, 
Burned  on  the  water:  the  poop  was  beaten  gold; 
Purple  the  sails,  and  so  perfumed  that 
The  winds  were  love-sick  with  them.     .     .    . 

For  her  own  person, 
It  beggared  all  description:  che  did  lie 
In  her  pavilion  —  cloth-of-gold  of  tissue  — 
O'cr-picturing  that  Venus  where  we  see 
The  fancy  out-work  nature:  on  each  side  her 
Stood  pretty  dimpled  bovs,  like  smiling  Cupids, 
2 


18  Address  to  the 

With  diners-colored  fans,  whose  wind  did  seem 
To  glow  the  delicate  cheeks  which  they  did  cool, 
And  what  they  did,  undid." 

By  the  side  of  all  this  there  was  a  no  less  elaborate  relig- 
ion, —  an  ecclesiastical  hierarchy,  —  powerful  as  the  sacer- 
dotalism of  Mediaeval  Europe,  with  a  creed  in  the  middle  of 
it  which  was  a  complicated  idolatry  of  the  physical  forces. 

There  are  at  bottom  but  two  possible  religions,  —  that 
which  rises  in  the  moral  nature  of  man,  and  which  takes 
shape  in  moral  commandments,  and  that  which  grows  out 
of  the  observation  of  the  material  energies  which  operate 
in  the  external  universe.  The  sun  at  all  times  has  been 
the  central  object  of  this  material  reverence.  The  sun  was 
the  parent  of  light ;  the  sun  was  the  lord  of  the  sky  and  the 
lord  of  the  seasons ;  at  the  sun's  bidding  the  earth  brought 
forth  her  harvests  and  ripened  them  to  maturity.  The  sun, 
too,  was  beneficent  to  the  good  and  to  the  evil,  and,  like  the 
laws  of  political  economy,  drew  no  harsh  distinctions  be- 
tween one  person  and  another.  It  demanded  only  that  cer- 
tain work  should  be  done,  and  smiled  equally  oh  the  crops 
of  the  slave-driver  and  the  garden  of  the  innocent  peasant. 
The  moon,  when  the  sun  sunk  to  his  night's  rest,  reigned 
as  his  vicegerent,  the  queen  of  the  revolving  heavens,  and 
in  her  waxing  and  waning  and  singular  movement  among 
the  stars  was  the  perpetual  occasion  of  admiring  and  ador- 
ing curiosity.  Nature  in  all  her  forms  was  wonderful ; 
Nature  in  her  beneficent  forms  was  to  be  loved  and  wor- 
shipped ;  and  being,  as  Nature  is,  indifferent  to  morality, 
bestowing  prosperity  on  principles  which  make  no  demands 
on  chastity  or  equity,  she  is,  in  one  form  or  other,  the 
divinity  on  whose  shrine  in  all  ages  the  favored  sections  of 
society  have  always  gladly  paid  their  homage.  Where 
Nature  is  sovereign,  there  is  no  need  of  austerity  and  self- 
denial.  The  object  of  life  is  the  pursuit  of  wealth  and  the 
pleasures  which  wealth  can  purchase  ;  and  the  rules  for  our 
practical  guidance  are  the  laws,  as  the  economists  say,  by 
which  wealth  can  be  acquired. 


University  of  St.  Andrew's.  19 

It  is  an  excellent  creed  for  those  who  have  the  happiness 
to  profit  by  it,  and  will  have  its  followers  to  the  end  of  time. 
In  these  later  ages  it  connects  itself  with  the  natural  sci- 
ences, progress  of  the  intellect,  specious  shadows  of  all  kinds 
which  will  not  interfere  with  its  supreme  management  of 
political  arrangements.  In  Egypt,  where  knowledge  was 
in  its  rudiments,  every  natural  force,  the  minutest  plant  or 
animal,  which  influenced  human  fortunes  for  good  or  evil, 
came  in  for  a  niche  in  the  shrine  of  the  temples  of  the  sun 
and  moon.  Snakes  and  crocodiles,  dogs,  cats,  cranes,  and 
beetles  were  propitiated  by  sacrifices,  by  labored  ceremoni- 
als of  laudation ;  nothing  living  was  too  mean  to  find  a 
place  in  the  omnivorous  devotionalism  of  the  Egyptian 
clergy.  We,  in  these  days,  proud  as  we  may  be  of  our  intel- 
lectual advances,  need  not  ridicule  popular  credulity.  Even 
here  in  Scotland,  not  so  long  ago,  wretched  old  women 
were  supposed  to  run  about  the  country  in  the  shape  of 
hares.  At  this  very  hour  the  ablest  of  living  natural  phi- 
losophers is  looking  gravely  to  the  courtships  of  moths  and 
butterflies  to  solve  the  problem  of  the  origin  of  man,  and 
prove  his  descent  from  an  African  baboon. 

There  was,  however,  in  ancient  Egypt  another  article  of 
faith  besides  nature-worship  of  transcendent  moment,  —  a 
belief  which  had  probably  descended  from  earlier  and  purer 
ages,  and  had  then  originated  in  the  minds  of  sincere  and 
earnest  men, — as  a  solution  of  the  real  problem  of  human- 
ity. The  inscriptions  and  paintings  in  the  tombs  near 
Thebes  make  it  perfectly  clear  that  the  Egyptians  looked 
forward  to  a  future  state,  —  to  the  judgment-bar  of  Osiris, 
where  they  would  each  one  day  stand  to  give  account  for 
their  actions.  They  believed  as  clearly  as  we  do,  and  with 
a  conviction  of  a  very  similar  kind,  that  those  who  had  done 
good  would  go  to  everlasting  life,  and  those  who  had  done 
evil  into  eternal  perdition. 

Such  a  belief,  if  coupled  with  an  accurate  perception  of 
what  good  and  evil  mean,  —  with  a  distinct  certainty  that 


20  .       Address  to  the 

men  will  be  tried  Hby  the  moral  law,  before  a  perfectly  just 
judge,  and  that  no  subterfuges  will  avail,  —  cannot  but  exer- 
cise a  most  profound  and  most  tremendous  influence  upon 
human  conduct.  And  yet  our  own  experience,,  if  nothing 
else,  proves  that  this  belief,  when  moulded  into  traditional 
and  conventional  shapes,  may  lose  its  practical  power  ;  nay, 
without  ceasing  to  be  professed,  and  even  sincerely  held, 
may  become  more  mischievous  than  salutary.  And  this  is 
owing  to  the  fatal  distinction  of  which  I  spoke  just  now, 
which  seems  to  have  an  irresistible  tendency  to  shape  itself, 
in  civilized  societies,  between  religious  and  moral  duties. 
With  the  help  of  this  distinction  it  becomes  possible  for  a 
man,  as  long  as  he  avoids  gross  sins,  to  neglect  every  one 
of  his  positive  obligations,  —  to  be  careless,  selfish,  unscru- 
pulous, indifferent  to  everything  but  his  own  pleasures,  — 
and  to  imagine  all  the  time  that  his  condition  is  perfectly 
satisfactory,  and  that  he  can  look  forward  to  what  is  before 
him  without  the  slightest  uneasiness.  All  accounts  repre- 
sent the  Egyptians  as  an  eminently  religious  people.  No 
profanity  was  tolerated  there,  no  skepticism,  no  insolent  dis- 
obedience to  the  established  priesthood.  If  a  doubt  ever 
crossed  the  mind  of  some  licentious  philosopher  as  to  the 
entire  sacredness  of  the  stainless  Apis,  if  ever  a  question 
forced  itself  on  him  whether  the  Lord  of  heaven  and  earth 
could  really  be  incarnated  in  the  stupidest  of  created  beasts, 
he  kept  his  counsels  to  himself,  if  he  was  not  shocked  at  his 
own  impiety.  The  priests,  who  professed  supernatural  pow- 
ers,—  the  priests,  who  were  in  communication  with  the 
gods  themselves,  —  they  possessed  the  keys  of  the  sacred 
mysteries,  and  what  was  Philosophy  that  it  should  lift  its 
voice  against  them  ?  The  word  of  the  priest  —  nine  parts 
a  charlatan,  and  one  part,  perhaps,  himself  imposed  on  — 
was  absolute.  He  knew  the  counsels  of  Osiris,  he  knew 
that  the  question  which  would  be  asked  at  the  dread  tribu- 
nal was  not  whether  a  man  had  been  just,  and  true,  and 
merciful,  but  whether  he  had  believed  what  he  was  told  to 


University  of  St.  Andrew's*  21 

believe,  and  had  duly  paid  the  fees  to  the  temple.  And  so 
the  world  went  its  way,  controlled  by  no  dread  of  retribu- 
tion ;  and  on  the  tomb-frescoes  you  can  see  legions  of  slaves 
under  the  lash  dragging  from  the  quarries  the  blocks  of 
granite  which  were  to  form  the  eternal  monuments  of  the 
Pharaohs'  tyranny ;  and  you  read  in  the  earliest  authentic 
history  that  when  there  was  a  fear  that  the  slave-races 
should  multiply  so  fast  as  to  be  dangerous,  their  babies  were 
flung  to  the  crocodiles. 

One  of  these  slave-races  rose  at  last  in  revolt.  Noticea- 
bly it  did  rfot  rise  against  oppression  as  such,  or  directly  hi 
consequence  of  oppression.  We  hear  of  no  massacre  of 
slave-drivers,  no  burning  of  towns  or  villages,  none  of  the 
usual  accompaniments  of  peasant  insurrections.  If  Egypt 
was  plagued,  it  was  not  by  mutinous  mobs  or  incendiaries. 
Half  a  million  men  simply  rose  up  and  declared  that  they 
could  endure  no  longer  the  mendacity,  the  hypocrisy,  the 
vile  and  incredible  rubbish  which  was  offered  to  them  in 
the  sacred  name  of  religion.  "  Let  us  go,"  they  said,  "  into 
the  wilderness,  go  out  of  these  soft  water-meadows  and  corn- 
fields, forsake  our  leeks  and  our  flesh-pots,  and  take  in 
exchange  a  life  of  hardship  and  wandering,  '  that  we  may 
worship  the  God  of  our  fathers.' "  Their  leader  had  been 
trained  in  the  wisdom  of  the  Egyptians,  and  among  the 
rocks  of  Sinai  had  learnt  that  it  was  wind  and  vanity. 
The  half-obscured  traditions  of  his  ancestors  awoke  to  life 
again,  and  were  rekindled  by  him  in  his  people.  They 
would  bear  with  lies  no  longer.  They  shook  the  dust  of 
Egypt  from  their  feet,  and  the  prate  and  falsehood  of  it  from 
their  souls,  and  they  withdrew,  with  all  belonging  to  them, 
into  the  Arabian  desert,  that  they  might  no  longer  serve 
cats,  and  dogs,  and  bulls,  and  beetles,  but  the  Eternal  Spirit 
who  had  been  pleased  to  make  his  existence  known  to 
them.  They  sung  no  paeans  of  liberty.  They  were  deliv- 
ered from  the  house  of  bondage,  but  it  was  the  bondage  of 
mendacity,  and  they  left  it  only  to  .assume  another  service. 


22  Address  to  the 

The  Eternal  had  taken  pity  on  them.  In  revealing  his  true 
nature  to  them,  He  had  taken  them  for  his  children.  They 
were  not  their  own,  but  his,  and  they  laid  their  lives  under 
commandments  which  were  as  close  a  copy  as,  with  the 
knowledge  which  they  possessed,  they  could  make,  to  the 
moral  laws  of  the  Maker  of  the  universe.  In  essentials  the 
Book  of  the  Law  was  a  covenant  of  practical  justice.  Re- 
wards  and  punishments  were  alike  immediate,  both  to  each 
separate  person  and  to  the  collective  nation.  Retribution 
in  a  life  to  come  was  dropped  out  of  sight,  not  denied,  but 
not  insisted  on.  The  belief  in  it  had  been  corrupted  to  evil, 
and  rather  enervated  than  encouraged  the  efforts  after  pres- 
ent equity.  Every  man  was  to  reap  as  he  had  sown,  — 
here,  in  the  immediate  world,  —  to  live  under  his  own  vine 
and  fig-tree,  and  thrive  or  suffer  according  to  his  actual  de- 
serts. Religion  was  not  a  thing  of  past  or  future,  an  account 
of  things  that  had  been,  or  of  things  which  one  day  would 
be  again.  God  was  the  actual  living  ruler  of  real  every-day 
life ;  nature-worship  was  swept  away,  and  in  the  warmth 
and  passion  of  conviction  they  became,  as  I  said,  the  soldiers 
of  a  purer  creed.  In  Palestine,  where  they  found  idolatry 
in  a  form  yet  fouler  and  more  cruel  than  what  they  had  left 
behind  them,  they  trampled  it  out  as  if  in  inspired  abomi- 
nation of  a  system  of  which  the  fruits  were  so  detestable. 
They  were  not  perfect,  —  very  far  from  perfect.  An  army 
at  best  is  made  of  mixed  materials,  and  war,  of  all  ways  of 
making  wrong  into  right,  is  the  harshest ;  but  they  were 
directed  by  a  noble  purpose,  and  they  have  left  a  mark 
never  to  be  effaced  in  the  history  of  the  human  race. 

The  fire  died  away.  "  The  Israelites,"  we  are  told,  "  min- 
gled among  the  heathen  and  learned  their  works."  They 
ceased  to  be  missionaries.  They  hardly  and  fitfully  pre- 
served the  records  of  the  meaning  of  their  own  exodus.  Eight 
hundred  years  went  by,  and  the  flame  rekindled  in  another 
country.  Cities  more  splendid  even  than  the  hundred-gated 
Thebes  itself  had  risen  on  the  banks  of  the  Euphrates. 


University  of  St.  Andrew's.  23 

Grand  military  empires  had  been  founded  on  war  and  con- 
quest. Peace  had  followed  when  no  enemies  were  left  to 
conquer ;  and  with  peace  had  come  philosophy,  science, 
agricultural  enterprise,  magnificent  engineering  works  for 
the  draining  and  irrigation  of  the  Mesopotamian  plains. 
Temples  and  palaces  towered  into  the  sky.  The  pomp  and 
luxury  of  Asia  rivaled,  and  even  surpassed,  the  glories  of 
Egypt ;  and  by  the  side  of  it  a  second  nature-worship, 
which,  if  less  elaborately  absurd,  was  more  deeply  detest- 
able. The  foulest  vices  were  consecrated  to  the  service  of 
the  gods,  and  the  holiest  ceremonies  were  inoculated  with 
impurity  and  sensuality. 

The  seventh  century  before  the  Christian  era  was  distin- 
guished over  the  whole  East  by  extraordinary  religious 
revolutions.  With  the  most  remarkable  of  these,  that  which 
bears  the  name  of  Buddha,  I  am  not  here  concerned. 
Buddhism  has  been  the  creed  for  more  than  two  thousand 
years  of  half  the  human  race,  but  it  left  unaffected  our 
own  western  world,  and  therefore  I  here  pass  it  by. 

Simultaneously  with  Buddha,  there  appeared  another 
teacher,  Zerdusht,  or,  as  the  Greeks  called  him,  Zoroaster, 
among  the  hardy  tribes  of  the  Persian  mountains.  He 
taught  a  creed  which,  like  that  of  the  Israelites,  was  es- 
sentially moral  and  extremely  simple.  Nature-worship,  as 
I  said,  knew  nothing  of  morality.  When  the  objects  of 
natural  idolatry  became  personified,  and  physical  phenom- 
ena were  metamorphosed  into  allegorical  mythology,  the 
indifference  to  morality  which  was  obvious  in  nature  became 
ascribed,  as  a  matter  of  course,  to  gods  which  were  but 
nature  in  a  personal  disguise.  Zoroaster,  like  Moses,  saw 
behind  the  physical  forces  into  the  deeper  laws  of  right  and 
wrong.  ^He  supposed  himself  to  discover  two  antagonist 
powers  contending  in  the  heart  of  man  as  well  as  in  the  out- 
ward universe,  —  a  spirit  of  light  and  a  spirit  of  darkness, 
a  spirit  of  truth  and  a  spirit  of  falsehood,  a  spirit  life-giving 
and  beautiful,  a  spirit  poisonous  and  deadly.  To  one  or  other 


24  Address  to  the 

of  these  powers  man  was  necessarily  in  servitude.  As  the 
follower  of  Ormuzd,  he  became  enrolled  in  the  celestial 
armies,  whose  business  was  to  fight  against  sin  and  misery, 
against  wrong-doing  and  impurity,  against  injustice  and  lies 
and  baseness  of  all  sorts  and  kinds  ;  and  every  one  with  a 
soul  in  him  to  prefer  good  to  evil  was  summoned  to  the 
holy  wars,  which  would  end  at  last  after  ages  in  the  final 
overthrow  of  Ahriman. 

The  Persians  caught  rapidly  Zoroaster's  spirit.  Uncor- 
rupted  by  luxury,  they  responded  eagerly  to  a  voice  which 
they  recognized  as  speaking  truth  to  them.  They  have 
been  called  the  Puritans  of  the  Old  "World.  Never  any 
people,  it  is  said,  hated  idolatry  as  they  hated  it,  and  for 
the  simple  reason  that  they  hated  lies.  A  Persian  lad, 
Herodotus  tells  us,  was  educated  in  three  especial  accom- 
plishments. He  was  taught  to  ride,  to  shoot,  and  to  speak 
the  truth,  —  that  is  to  say,  he  was  brought  up  to  be  brave, 
active,  valiant,  and  upright.  When  a  man  speaks  the  truth, 
you  may  count  pretty  surely  that  he  possesses  most  other 
virtues.  Half  the  vices  in  the  world  rise  out  of  cowardice, 
and  one  who  is  afraid  of  lying  is  usually  afraid  of  nothing 
else.  Speech  is  an  article  of  trade  in  which  we  are  all 
dealers,  and  the  one  beyond  all  others  where  we  are  most 
bound  to  provide  honest  wares  :  — 


ot  KUKdvof  oftuf  "Aidao  TrvXalaiv 
6f  i9'  Irepov  ftev  Kevdy  ivl  <j>peaiv  u//lo  6e  e'nrfj. 

This  seems  to  have  been  the  Persian  temperament,  and  in 
virtue  of  it  they  were  chosen  as  the  instruments  —  clearly 
recognized  as  such  by  the  Prophet  Isaiah  for  one  —  which 
were  to  sweep  the  earth  clean  of  abominations,  which  had 
grown  to  an  intolerable  height.  Bel  bowed  down,  and 
Nebo  had  to  stoop  before  them.  Babylon,  the*  lady  of 
kingdoms,  was  laid  in  the  dust,  and  "  her  star-gazers,  and 
her  astrologers,  and  her  monthly  prognosticates  "  could  not 
save  her  with  all  their  skill.  They  and  she  were  borne 


University  of  St.  Andrew's.  25 

away  together.  Egypt's  turn  followed.  Retribution  had 
been  long  delayed,  but  her  cup  ran  over  at  last.  The  palm- 
groves  were  flung  into  the  river,  the  temples  polluted,  the 
idols  mutilated.  The  precious  Apis,  for  all  its  godhood,  was 
led  with  a  halter  before  the  Persian  king,  and  stabbed  in 
the  sight  of  the  world  by  Persian  steel. 

"  Profane ! "  exclaimed  the  priests,  as  pious  persons,  on 
like  occasions,  have  exclaimed  a  thousand  times :  "  these 
Puritans  have  no  reverence  for  holy  things."  Rather  it  is 
because  they  do  reverence  things  which  deserve  reverence 
that  they  loathe  and  abhor  the  counterfeit.  What  does  an 
ascertained  imposture  deserve  but  to  be  denied,  exposed, 
insulted,  trampled  under  foot,  danced  upon,  if  nothing  less 
will  serve,  till  the  very  geese  take  courage  and  venture  to 
hiss  derision?  Are  we  to  wreathe  aureoles  round  the 
brows  of  phantasms  lest  we  shock  the  sensibilities  of  the 
idiots  who  have  believed  them  to  be  divine?  Was  the 
Prophet  Isaiah  so  tender  in  his  way  of  treating  such  mat- 
ters ? 

"  Who  hath  formed  a  god,  or  molten  a  graven  image  that  is 
profitable  for  nothing  ?  He  heweth  him  down  cedars.  He  tak- 
eth  the  cypress  and  the  oak  from  the  trees  of  the  forest.  He 
burneth  part  thereof  in  the  fire;  with  part  thereof  he  eateth 
flesh.  He  roasteth  roast,  and  is  satisfied  :  yea,  he  warmeth  him- 
self, and  saith,  Aha,  I  am  warm,  I  have  seen  the  fire :  and  the 
residue  thereof  he  maketh  a  god,  even  his  graven  image :  he 
falleth  down  unto  it,  and  worshippeth  it,  and  prayeth  unto  it, 
and  saith,  Deliver  one ;  for  thou  art  my  god. 

"  Enter  into  the  rock,  and  hide  thee  in  the  dust,  for  fear  of  the 
Lord,  for  the  glory  of  His  majesty  when  He  ariseth  to  shake  ter- 
ribly the  earth.  In  that  day  a  man  shall  cast  his  idols  of  silver 
and  gold,  which  they  made  each  one  for  himself  to  worship,  to 
the  moles  and  the  bats." 

Again  events  glide  on.  Persia  runs  the  usual  course. 
Virtue  and  truth  produced  strength,  strength  dominion,  do- 
minion riches,  riches  luxury,  and  luxury  weakness  and  col- 
lapse, —  fatal  sequence  repeated  so  often,  yet  to  so  little  pur- 


26  Address  to  the 

pose.  The  hardy  warrior  of  the  mountains  degenerated 
into  a  vulgar  sybarite.  His  manliness  became  effeminacy  ; 
his  piety  a  ritual  of  priests  ;  himself  a  liar,  a  coward,  and  a 
slave.  The  Greeks  conquered  the  Persians,  copied  their 
manners,  and  fell  in  turn  before  the  Romans.  We  count 
little  more  than  500  years  from  the  fall  of  Babylon,  and  the 
entire  known  world  was  lying  at  the  feet  of  a  great  military 
despotism.  Coming  originally  themselves  from  the  East, 
the  classic  nations  had  brought  with  them  also  the  primae- 
val nature-worship  of  Asia.  The  Greek  imagination  had 
woven  the  Eastern  metaphors  into  a  singular  mythology, 
in  which  the  gods  were  represented  as  beings  possessing  in  a 
splendid  degree  physical  beauty,  physical  strength,  with  the 
kind  of  awfulness  which  belonged  to  their  origin  ;  the  fitful, 
wanton,  changeable,  yet  also  terrible  power*  of  the  ele- 
mental world.  Translated  into  the  language  of  humanity, 
the  actions  and  adventures  thus  ascribed  to  the  gods  be- 
came in  process  of  time  impossible  to  be  believed.  Intel- 
lect expanded  ;  moral  sense  grew  more  vigorous,  and  with 
it  the  conviction  that  if  the  national  traditions  were  true, 
man  must  be  more  just  than  his  Maker.  In  .^Eschylus  and 
Sophocles,  in  Pindar  and  Plato,  you  see  conscience  asserting 
its  sovereignty  over  the  most  sacred  beliefs,  —  instinctive 
reverence  and  piety  struggling  sometimes  to  express  them- 
selves under  the  names  and  forms  of  the  past,  sometimes 
bursting  out  uncontrollably  into  indignant  abhorrence  :  — 


6'  unopa  yaaTplfj.apyov 
MaKupuv  TIV'  dnelv  : 
'AyiaTafMii  .  .  . 
KOI  TTOV  n  KOt  fiporuv  (ftpevae 
virep  rbv  «Aai?^  "kbyov 


Xap«7<5'  uirep  UTTO.VTU  revest 


im<j>epoiaa  rtfiuv 

nal  umarov  kur/aaro  marov 

lfjLfj.£vai  rd  jroMawf. 


University  of  St.  Andrew's.  27 

"  To  me  'twere  strange  indeed 
To  charge  the  blessed  gods  with  greed. 
I  dare  not  do  it.  ... 

Myths  too  oft, 

With  quaintly  colored  lies  en  wrought, 
To  stray  from  truth  have  mortals  brought. 
And  Art,  which  round  all  things  below 
A  charm  of  loveliness  can  throw, 
Has  robed  the  false  in  honor's  hue, 
And  made  the  unbelievable  seem  true." 

"  All  religions,"  says  Gibbon,  "  are  to  the  vulgar  equally 
true,  to  the  philosopher  equally  false,  and  to  the  statesman 
equally  useful : "  thus  scornfully  summing  up  the  theory  of 
the  matter  which  he  found  to  be  held  by  the  politicians  of 
the  age  which  he  was  describing,  and  perhaps  of  his  own. 
Religion,  as  a  moral  force,  died  away  with  the  establishment 
of  the  Roman  Empire,  and  with  it  died  probity,  patriotism, 
and  human  dignity,  and  all  that  men  had  learnt  in  nobler 
ages  to  honor  and  to  value  as  good.  Order  reigned  un- 
broken under  the  control  of  the  legions.  Industry  flour- 
ished, and  natural  science,  and  most  of  the  elements  of  what 
we  now  call  civilization.  Ships  covered  the  seas.  Huge 
towns  adorned  the  imperial  provinces.  The  manners  of 
men  became  more  artificial,  and  in  a  certain  sense  more 
humane.  Religion  was  a  State  establishment,  —  a  decent 
acknowledgment  of  a  power  or  powers  which,  if  they  existed 
at  all,  amused  themselves  in  the  depths  of  space,  careless,  so 
their  deity  was  not  denied,  of  the  woe  or  weal  of  humanity  : 
the  living  fact,  supreme  in  Church  and  State,  being  the 
wearer  of  the  purple,  who,  as  the  practical  realization  of  au- 
thority, assumed  the  name  as  well  as  the  substance.  The 
one  god  immediately  known  to  man  was  henceforth  the 
Divus  Cassar,  whose  throne  in  the  sky  was  waiting  empty 
for  him  till  his  earthly  exile  was  ended,  and  it  pleased  him 
to  join  or  rejoin  his  kindred  divinities. 

It  was  the  era  of  atheism,  —  atheism  such  as  this  earth 
never  witnessed  before  or  since.  You  who  have  read  Tac- 
itus know  the  practical  fruits  of  it,  as  they  appeared  at  the 


28  Address  to  the 

heart  of  the  system  hi  the  second  Babylon,  the  proud  city 
of  the  seven  hills.  You  will  remember  how,  for  the  crime 
of  a  single  slave,  the  entire  household  of  a  Roman  patrician, 
four  hundred  innocent  human  beings,  were  led  in  chains 
across  the  Forum  and  murdered  by  what  was  called  law. 
You  will  remember  the  exquisite  Nero,  who,  in  his  love  of 
art,  to  throw  himself  more  fully  into  the  genius  of  Greek 
tragedy,  committed  incest  with  his  mother  that  he  might  be 
a  second  CEdipus,  and  assassinated  her  that  he  might  realize 
the  sensations  of  Orestes.  You  will  recall  one  scene  which 
Tacitus  describes,  not  as  exceptional  or  standing  alone,  but 
merely,  he  says,  "  quas  ut  exemplum  referam  ne  sa?pius 
eadem  prodigentia  narranda  sit,"  —  the  hymeneal  night- 
banquet  on  Agrippa's  lake,  graced  by  the  presence  of  the 
wives  and  daughters  of  the  Roman  senators,  where  amidst 
blazing  fireworks  and  music  and  cloth-of-gold  pavilions  and 
naked  prostitutes,  the  majesty  of  the  Caesars  celebrated  his 
nuptials  with  a  boy. 

There,  I  conceive,  was  the  visible  product  of  material 
civilization,  where  there  was  no  fear  of  God,  in  the  middle 
of  it,  —  the  final  outcome  of  wealth,  and  prosperity,  and  art, 
and  culture,  raised  aloft  as  a  sign  for  all  ages  to  look  upon. 

But  it  is  not  to  this,  nor  to  the  fire  of  hell  which  in  due 
time  burst  out  to  consume  it,  that  I  desire  now  to  draw 
your  attention.  I  have  to  point  out  to  you  two  purifying 
movements  which  were  at  work  in  the  midst  of  the  pollu- 
tion, one  of  which  came  to  nothing  and  survives  only  in 
books,  the  second  a  force  which  was  to  mould  for  ages  the 
future  history  of  man.  Both  require  our  notice,  for  both 
singularly  contained  the  particular  feature  which  is  called 
the  reproach  of  Calvinism. 

The  blackest  night  is  never  utterly  dark.  When  man- 
kind seem  most  abandoned  there  are  always  a  seven  thou- 
sand somewhere  who  have  not  bowed  the  knee  to  the  fash- 
ionable opinions  of  the  hour.  Among  the  great  Roman 
families  a  certain  number  remained  republican  in  feeling 


University  of  St.  Andrew's.  29 

and  republican  in  habit.  The  State  religion  was  as  incredi- 
ble to  them  as  to  every  one  else.  They  could  not  persuade 
themselves  that  they  could  discover  the  will  of  Heaven  in 
the  color  of  a  calf  s  liver  or  in  the  appetite  of  the  sacred 
chickens  ;  but  they  had  retained  the  moral  instincts  of  their 
citizen  ancestors.  They  knew  nothing  of  God  or  the  gods, 
but  they  had  something  in  themselves  which  made  sensual- 
ity nauseating  instead  of  pleasant  to  them.  They  had  an 
"austere  sense  of  the  meaning  of  the  word  "  duty."  They 
could  distinguish  and  reverence  the  nobler  possibilities  of 
their  nature.  They  disdained  what  was  base  and  effemi- 
nate, and,  though  religion  failed  them,  they  constructed  out 
of  philosophy  a  rule  which  would  serve  to  live  by.  Stoi- 
cism is  a  not  unnatural  refuge  of  thoughtful  men  in  con- 
fused and  skeptical  ages.  It  adheres  rigidly  to  morality. 
It  offers  no  easy  Epicurean  explanation  of  the  origin  of 
man,  which  resolves  him  into  an  organization  of  particles, 
and  dismisses  him  again  into  nothingness.  It  recognizes 
only  that  men  who  are  the  slaves  of  their  passions  are  mis-i 
erable  and  impotent,  and  insists  that  personal  inclinations 
shall  be  subordinated  to  conscience.  It  prescribes  plainness 
of  life,  that  the  number  of  our  necessities  may  be  as  few  as 
possible,  and  in  placing  the  business  of  life  in  intellectual  and 
moral  action,  it  destroys  the  temptation  to  sensual  gratifi- 
cations. It  teaches  a  contempt  of  death  so  complete  that 
it  can  be  encountered  without  a  flutter  of  the  pulse ;  and, 
while  it  raises  men  above  the  suffering  which  makes  others 
miserable,  generates  a  proud  siibmissiveness  to  sorrow 
which  noblest  natures  feel  most  keenly,  by  representing 
this  huge  scene  and  the  shows  which  it  presents  as  the  work 
of  some  unknown  but  irresistible  force,  against  which  it  is 
vain  to  struggle  and  childish  to  repine. 

As  with  Calvinism,  a  theoretic  belief  in  an  overruling 
will  or  destiny  was  not  only  compatible  with,  but  seemed 
naturally  to  issue  in  the  control  of  the  animal  appetites. 
The  Stoic  did  not  argue  that,  "  As  fate  governs  all  things,  I 


80  Address  to  the 

can  do  no  wrong,  and  therefore  I  will  take  my  pleasure ; " 
but  rather,  "  The  moral  law  within  me  is  the  noblest  part 
of  my  being,  and  compels  me  to  submit  to  it."  He  did  not 
withdraw  from  the  world  like  the  Christian  anchorite.  He 
remained  at  his  post  in  the  senate,  the  Forum,  or  the  army. 
A  Stoic  in  Marcus  Aurelius  gave  a  passing  dignity  to  the 
dishonored  purple.  In  Tacitus,  Stoicism  has  left  an  eter- 
nal evidence  how  grand  a  creature  man  may  be,  though  un- 
assisted by  conscious  dependence  on  external  spiritual  help, 
through  steady  disdain  of  what  is  base,  steady  reverence  for 
all  that  deserves  to  be  revered,  and  inflexible  integrity  in 
word  and  deed. 

But  Stoicism  could  under  no  circumstances  be  a  regener- 
ating power  in  the  general  world.  It  was  a  position  only 
tenable  to  the  educated ;  it  was  without  hope  and  without 
enthusiasm.  From  a  contempt  of  the  objects  which  man- 
kind most  desired,  the  step  was  short  and  inevitable  to 
contempt  of  mankind  themselves.  Wrapped  in  mournful 
self-dependence,  the  Stoic  could  face  calmly  for  himself 
whatever  lot  the  fates  might  send  :  — 

"  Si  fractus  illabatur  orbis, 
Impavidum  ferient  ruinae." 

But,  natural  as  such  a  creed  might  be  in  a  Roman  noble 
under  the  Empire,  natural  perhaps  as  it  may  always  be  in 
corrupted  ages  and  amidst  disorganized  beliefs,  the  very 
sternness  of  Stoicism  was  repellent.  It  carried  no  consola- 
tion to  the  hearts  of  the  suffering  millions,  who  were  in  no 
danger  of  being  led  away  by  luxury,  because  their  whole  lives 
were  passed  in  poverty  and  wretchedness.  It  was  individ- 
ual, not  missionary.  The  Stoic  declared  no  active  war 
against  corruption.  He  stood  alone,  protesting  scornfully 
in  silent  example  against  evils  which  he  was  without  power 
to  cure.  Like  Cossar,  he  folded  himself  in  his  mantle.  The 
world  might  do  its  worst.  He  would  keep  his  own  soul  un- 
stained. 

Place  beside  the  Stoics  their  contemporaries,  the  Galilean 


University  of  St.  Andrew's.  31 

fishermen  and  the  tent-maker  of  Tarsus.  I  am  not  about 
to  sketch  in  a  few  paragraphs  the  rise  of  Christianity.  I 
mean  only  to  point  to  the  principles  on  which  the  small 
knot  of  men  gathered  themselves  together  who  were  about 
to  lay  the  foundations  of  a  vast  spiritual  revolution.  The 
guilt  and  wretchedness  in  which  the  world  was  steeped  St. 
Paul  felt  as  keenly  as  Tacitus.  Like  Tacitus,  too,  he  be- 
lieved that  the  wild  and  miserable  scene  which  he  beheld 
was  no  result  of  accident,  but  had  been  ordained  so  to  be, 
and  was  the  direct  expression  of  an  all-mastering  Power. 
But  he  saw  also  that  this  Power  was  no  blind  necessity  or 
iron  chain  of  connected  cause  and  effect,  but  a  perfectly 
just,  perfectly  wise  being,  who  governed  all  things  by  the 
everlasting  immutable  laws  of  his  own  nature ;  that  when 
these  laws  were  resisted  or  forgotten  they  wrought  rum, 
and  confusion,  and  slavery  to  death  and  sin ;  that  when 
they  were  recognized  and  obeyed,  the  curse  would  be  taken 
away,  and  freedom  and  manliness  come  back  again. 
Whence  the  disobedience  had  first  risen  was  a  problem 
which  St.  Paul  solved  in  a  manner  not  all  unlike  the  Per- 
sians. There  was  a  rebellious  spirit  in  the  universe,  pene- 
trating into  men's  hearts,  and  prompting  them  to  disloyalty 
and  revolt.  It  removed  the  question  a  step  further  back 
without  answering  it,  but  the  fact  was  plain  as  the  sun- 
light. Men  had  neglected  the  laws  of  their  Maker.  In 
neglecting  them  they  had  brought  universal  ruin,  not  on 
themselves  only,  but  on  all  society ;  and  if  the  world  was  to 
be  saved  from  destruction,  they  must  be  persuaded  or  forced 
back  into  their  aU'egiance.  The  law  itself  had  been  once 
more  revealed  on  the  mountains  of  Palestine,  and  in  the 
person  and  example  of  One  who  had  lived  and  died  to 
make  it  known ;  and  those  who  had  heard  and  known  Him, 
being  possessed  with  his  spirit,  felt  themselves  com- 
missioned as  a  missionary  legion  to  publish  the  truth  to 
mankind.  They  were  not,  like  the  Israelites  or  the  Per- 
sians, to  fight  with  the  sword,  —  not  even  in  their  own  de- 


82  Address  to  the 

fense.  The  sword  can  take  life,  but  not  give  it ;  and  the 
command  to  the  Apostles  was  to  sow  the  invisible  seed  in 
the  hot-bed  of  corruption,  and  feed  and  foster  it,  and  water 
it,  with  the  blood,  not  of  others,  but  themselves.  Their 
own  wills,  ambitions,  hopes,  desires,  emotions,  were 
swallowed  up  in  the  will  to  which  they  had  surrendered 
themselves.  They  were  soldiers.  It  was  St.  Paul's  meta- 
phor, and  no  other  is  so  appropriate.  They  claimed  no 
merit  through  their  calling ;  they  were  too  conscious  of 
their  own  sins  to  indulge  in  the  poisonous  reflection  that 
they  were  not  as  other  men.  They  were  summoned  out  on 
their  allegiance,  and  armed  with  the  spiritual  strength 
which  belongs  to  the  consciousness  of  a  just  cause.  If  they 
indulged  any  personal  hope,  it  was  only  that  their  weak- 
nesses would  not  be  remembered  against  them,  —  that,  hav- 
ing been  chosen  for  a  work  in  which  the  victory  was  as- 
sured, they  would  be  made  themselves  worthy  of  their 
calling,  and,  though  they  might  slide,  would  not  be  allowed 
to  fall.  Many  mysteries  remained  unsolved.  Man  was  as 
clay  in  the  potter's  hand ;  one  vessel  was  made  to  honor 
and  another  to  dishonor.  Why,  who  could  tell  ?  This  only 
they  knew,  that  they  must  themselves  do  no  dishonor  to 
the  spirit  that  was  in  them,  —  gain  others,  gain  all  who 
would  join  them  for  their  common  purpose,  and  fight  with 
all  their  souls  against  ignorance  and  sin. 

The  fishermen  of  Gennesaret  planted  Christianity,  and 
many  a  winter  and  many  a  summer  have  since  rolled  over 
it.  More  than  once  it  has  shed  its  ^leaves  and  seemed  to 
be  dying,  and  when  the  buds  burst  again  the  color  of  the 
foliage  was  changed.  The  theory  of  it  which  is  taught  to- 
day in  the  theological  schools  of  St.  Andrew's  would  have 
sounded  strange  from  the  pulpit  of  your  once  proud  cathe- 
dral. As  the  same  thought  expresses  itself  in  many  lan- 
guages, so  spiritual  truths  assume  ever-varying  forms.  The 
garment  fades,  —  the  moths  devour  it,  —  the  woven  fibres 
disintegrate  and  turn  to  dust.  The  idea  only  is  immortal, 


University  of  St.  Andrew's.  33 

and  never  fades.  The  hermit  who  made  his  cell  below  the 
cliff  where  the  cathedral  stands,  the  monkish  architect  who 
designed  the  plan  of  it,  the  princes  who  brought  it  to  per- 
fection, the  Protestants  who  shattered  it  into  ruin,  the 
preacher  of  last  Sunday  at  the  University  church,  would 
have  many  a  quarrel  were  they  to  meet  now  before  they 
would  understand  each  other.  But  at  the  bottom  of  the 
minds  of  all  the  same  thought  would  be  predominant,  — 
that  they  were  soldiers  of  the  Almighty,  commissioned  to 
fight  with  lies  and  selfishness,  and  that  all  alike,  they  and 
those  against  whom  they  were  contending,  were  in  his 
hands,  to  deal  with  after  his  own  pleasure. 

Again  six  centuries  go  by.  Christianity  becomes  the 
religion  of  the  Roman  Empire.  The  Empire  divides,  and 
the  Church  is  divided  with  it.  Europe  is  overrun  by  the 
Northern  nations.  The  power  of  the  Western  Caesars 
breaks  in  pieces,  but  the  Western  Church  stands  erect, 
makes  its  way  into  the  hearts  of  the  conquerors,  penetrates 
the  German  forests,  opens  a  path  into  Britain  and  Ireland. 
By  the  noble  Gothic  nations  it  is  welcomed  with  passionate 
enthusiasm.  The  warriors  of  Odin  are  transformed  into  a 
Christian  chivalry,  and  the  wild  Valhalla  into  a  Christian 
heaven.  Fiery,  passionate  nations  are  not  tamed  in  a  gen- 
eration or  a  century,  but  a  new  conception  of  what  was 
praiseworthy  and  excellent  had  taken  hold  of  their  imagi- 
nation and  the  understanding.  Kings,  when  their  day  of 
toil  was  over,  laid  down  crown  and  sword,  and  retired  into 
cloisters,  to  pass  what  remained  of  life  to  them  in  prayers 
and  meditations  on  eternity.  The  supreme  object  of  rever- 
ence was  no  longer  the  hero  of  the  battle-field,  but  the 
barefoot  missionary  who  was  carrying  the  Gospel  among 
^the  tribes  that  were  still  untaught.  So  beautiful  in  then- 
conception  of  him  was  the  character  of  one  of  these  wander- 
ing priests  that  their  stories  formed  a  new  mythology.  So 
vast  were  the  real  miracles  which  they  were  working  on 
men's  souls  that  wonders  of  a  more  ordinary  sort  were 


34  Address  to  the 

assigned  to  them  as  a  matter  of  course.  They  raised  the 
dead,  they  healed  the  sick,  they  cast  out  devils  with  a 
word  or  with  the  sign  of  the  cross.  Plain  facts  were  too 
poor  for  the  enthusiasm  of  German  piety ;  and  noble  hu- 
man figures  were  exhibited,  as  it  were,  in  the  resplendent 
light  of  a  painted  window,  in  the  effort  to  do  them  exagger- 
ated honor. 

It  was  pity,  for  truth  only  smells  sweet  forever,  and 
illusions,  however  innocent,  are  deadly  as  the  canker-worm. 
Long  cycles  had  to  pass  before  the  fruit  of  these  poison- 
seeds  would  ripen.  The  practical  result  meanwhile  was  to 
substitute  in  the  minds  of  the  sovereign  races  which  were 
to  take  the  lead  in  the  coming  era  the  principles  of  the 
moral  law  for  the  law  of  force  and  the  sword. 

The  Eastern  branch  of  the  divided  Church  experienced 
meanwhile  a  less  happy  fortune.  In  the  East  there  was  no 
virgin  soil  like  the  great,  noble  Teutonic  peoples.  Asia  was 
a  worn-out  stage,  on  which  drama  after  drama  of  history 
had  been  played,  and  played  out.  Languid  luxury  only 
was  there,  huge  aggregation  of  wealth  in  particular  local- 
ities, and  the  no  less  inevitable  shadow  attached  to  luxury 
by  the  necessities  of  things,  oppression  and  misery  and 
squalor.  Christianity  and  the  world  had  come  to  terms 
after  the  established  fashion,  —  the  world  to  be  let  alone  in 
its  pleasures -and  its  sins;  the  Church  relegated  to  opinion, 
with  free  liberty  to  split  doctrinal  hairs  to  the  end  of  time. 
The  work  of  the  Church's  degradation  had  begun,  even 
before  it  accepted  the  tainted  hand  of  Constantine.  Al- 
ready in  the  third  century  speculative  Christianity  had 
become  the  fashionable  creed  of  Alexandria,  and  had  pur- 
chased the  favor  of  patrician  congregations,  if  not  by  open 
tolerance  of  vice,  yet  by  leaving  it  to  grow  uiiresisted.  St. 
Clement  details  contemptuously  the  inventory  of  the  boudoir 
of  a  fine  lady  of  his  flock,  the  list  of  essences  on  her  toilet- 
table,  the  shoes,  sandals,  and  slippers  with  which  her  dainty 
feet  were  decorated  hi  endless  variety.  He  describes  her 


University  of  St.  Andrew's.  35 

as  she  ascends  the  steps  of  the  /Sao-tAt*?/,  to  which  she  was 
going  for  what  she  called  her  prayers,  with  a  page  lifting 
up  her  train.  He  paints  her  as  she  walks  along  the  street, 
her  petticoats  projecting  with  some  horsehair  arrangement 
behind,  and  the  street  boys  jeering  at  her  as  she  passes. 

All  that  Christianity  was  meant  to  do  in  making  life 
simple  and  habits  pure  was  left  undone,  while,  with  a  few 
exceptions,  like  that  of  St.  Clement  himself,  the  intellectual 
energy  of  its  bishops  and  teachers  was  exhausted  in  spinning 
endless  cobwebs  of  metaphysical  theology.  Human  life  at 
the  best  is  enveloped  in  darkness  ;  we  know  not  what  we 
are  or  whither  we  are  bound.  Eeligion  is  the  light  by  which 
we  are  to  see  our  way  along  the  moral  pathways  without 
straying  into  the  brake  or  the  morass.  We  are  not  to  look 
at  religion  itself,  but  at  surrounding  things  with  the  help 
of  religion.  If  we  fasten  our  attention  upon  the  light 
itself,  analyzing  it  into  its  component  rays,  speculating 
on  the  union  and  composition  of  the  substances  of  which  it 
is  composed,  not  only  will  it  no  longer  serve  us  for  a  guide, 
but  our  dazzled  senses  lose  their  natural  powers ;  we  should 
grope  our  way  more  safely  in  conscious  blindness. 

"When  the  light  within  you  is  darkness,  how  great  is  that 
darkness !  " 

In  the  place  of  the  old  material  idolatry  we  erect  a  new 
idolatry  of  words  and  phrases.  Our  duty  is  no  longer  to 
be  true,  and  honest,  and  brave,  and  self-denying,  and  pure, 
but  to  be  exact  in  our  formulas,  to  hold  accurately  some 
nice  and  curious  proposition,  to  place  damnation  in  straying 
a  hair's  breadth  from  some  symbol  which  exults  in  being  un- 
intelligible, and  salvation  in  the  skill  with  which  the  mind 
can  balance  itself  on  some  intellectual  tight-rope. 

There  is  no  more  instructive  phenomenon  in  history  than 
the  ease  and  rapidity  with  which  the  Arabian  caliphs  lopped 
off  the  fairest  provinces  of  the  Eastern  Empire.  When  na- 
tions are  easily  conquered,  we  may  be  sure  that  they  have 
first  lost  their  moral  self-respect.  When  their  religions,  as 


36  Address  to  the 

they  call  them,  go  down  at  a  breath,  those  religions  have 
become  already  but  bubbles  of  vapor.  The  laws  of  Heaven 
are  long-enduring,  but  their  patience  comes  to  an  end  at 
last.  Because  justice  is  not  executed  speedily,  men  persuade 
themselves  that  there  is  no  such  thing  as  justice.  But  the 
lame  foot,  as  the  Greek  proverb  said,  overtakes  the  swift 
one  in  the  end ;  and  the  longer  the  forbearance,  the  sharper 
the  retribution  when  it  comes. 

As  the  Greek  theology  was  one  of  the  most  complicated 
accounts  ever  offered  of  the  nature  of  God  and  his  relation 
to  man,  so  the  message  of  Mahomet,  when  he  first  unfolded 
the  green  banner,  was  one  of  the  most  simple  :  There  is  no 
god  but  God  ;  God  is  King,  and  you  must  and  shall  obey 
his  will.  This  was  Islam,  as  it  was  first  offered  at  the 
sword's  point  to  people  who  had  lost  the  power  of  under- 
standing any  other  argument :  Your  images  are  wood  and 
stone ;  your  metaphysics  are  words  without  understanding  ; 
the  world  lies  in  wickedness  and  wretchedness  because  you 
have  forgotten  the  statutes  of  your  Master,  and  you  shall  go 
back  to  those ;  you  shall  fulfill  the  purpose  for  which  you 
were  set  to  live  upon  the  earth,  or  you  shall  not  live  at  all. 

Tremendous  inroad  upon  the  liberties  of  conscience  ! 
What  right,  it  is  asked,  have  those  people  that  you  have 
been  calling  soldiers  of  the  Almighty  to  interfere  by  force 
with  the  opinions  of  others  ?  Let  them  leave  us  alone ;  we 
meddle  not  with  them.  Let  them,  if  they  please,  obey  those 
laws  they  talk  of ;  we  have  other  notions  of  such  things; 
we  will  obey  ours,  and  let  the  result  judge  between  us. 
The  result  was  judging  between  them.  The  meek  Apostle, 
with  no  weapon  but  his  word  and  his  example,  and  winning 
victories  by  himself  submitting  to  be  killed,  is  a  fairer  object 
than  a  fierce  Kaled,  calling  himself  the  sword  of  the  Al- 
mighty. But  we  cannot  order  for  ourselves  in  what  way 
these  things  shall  be.  The  caitiff  Damascenes  to  whom 
Kaled  gave  the  alternative  of  the  Koran  or  death  were  men 
themselves,  who  had  hands  to  hold  a  sword  with  if  they  had 


University  of  St.  Andrew's.  37 

heart  to  use  it,  or  a  creed  for  which  they  cared  to  risk  their 
lives.  In  such  a  quarrel  superior  strength  and  courage  are 
the  signs  of  the  presence  of  a  nobler  conviction. 

To  the  question,  "  What  right  have  you  to  interfere  with 
us  ?  "  there  is  but  one  answer  :  "  We  must.  These  things 
which  we  tell  you  are  true  ;  and  in  your  hearts  you  know 
it ;  your  own  cowardice  convicts  you.  The  moral  laws  of 
your  Maker  are  written  in  your  consciences  as  well  as  hi 
ours.  If  you  disobey  them,  you  bring  disaster  not  only  on 
your  own  wretched  selves,  but  on  all  around  you.  It  is  our 
common  concern,  and  if  you  will  not  submit,  in  the  name 
of  our  Master  we  will  compel  you." 

Any  fanatic,  it  will  be  said,  might  use  the  same  language. 
Is  not  history  full  of  instances  of  dreamers  or  impostors, 
"  boasting  themselves  to  be  somebody,"  who  for  some  wild 
illusion,  or  for  their  own  ambition,  have  thrown  the  world 
into  convulsions  ?  Is  not  Mahomet  himself  a  signal  —  the 
most  signal  —  illustration  of  it  ?  I  should  say  rather  that 
when  men  have  risen  in  arms  for  a  false  cause  the  event  has 
proved  it  by  the  cause  coming  to  nothing.  The  world  is 
not  so  constituted  that  courage,  and  strength,  and  endurance, 
and  organization,  and  success  long  sustained  are  to  be  ob- 
tained in  the  service  of  falsehood.  If  I  could  think  that, 
I  should  lose  the  most  convincing  reason  for  believing  that 
we  are  governed  by  a  moral  power.  The  moral  laws  of  our 
being  execute  themselves  through  the  instrumentality  of 
men ;  and  in  those  great  movements  which  determine  the 
moral  condition  of  many  nations  through  many  centuries, 
the  stronger  side,  it  seems  to  me,  has  uniformly  been  the 
better  side,  and  stronger  because  it  has  been  better. 

I  am  not  upholding  Mahomet  as  if  he  had  been  a  perfect 
man,  or  the  Koran  as  a  second  Bible.  The  crescent  was 
no  sun,  nor  even  a  complete  moon  reigning  full-orbed  in 
the  night  heaven.  The  light  there  was  in  it  was  but  re- 
flected from  the  sacred  books  of  the  Jews  and  the  Arab 
traditions.  The  morality  of  it  was  defective.  The  detailed 


38  Address  to  the     • 

conception  of  man's  duties  inferior,  far  inferior,  to  what  St. 
Martin  and  St.  Patrick,  St.  Columba  and  St.  Augustine  were 
teaching  or  had  taught  in  Western  Europe.  Mahometan- 
ism  rapidly  degenerated.  The  first  caliphs  stood  far  above 
Saladin.  The  descent  from  Saladin  to  a  modern  Moslem 
despot  is  like  a  fall  over  a  precipice.  All  established  things, 
nations,  constitutions,  all  established  things  which  have  life 
in  them,  have  also  the  seeds  of  death.  They  grow,  they 
have  their  day  of  usefulness,  they  decay  and  pass  away, 
"  lest  one  good  custom  should  corrupt  the  world." 

But  the  light  which  there  was  in  the  Moslem  creed  was 
real.  It  taught  the  omnipotence  and  omnipresence  of  one 
eternal  Spirit,  the  Maker  and  Ruler  of  all  things,  by  whose 
everlasting  purpose  all  things  were,  and  whose  will  all 
things  must  obey;  and  this  central  truth,  to  which  later 
experience  and  broader  knowledge  can  add  nothing,  it  has 
taught  so  clearly  and  so  simply  that  in  Islam  there  has  been 
no  room  for  heresy,  and  scarcely  for  schism. 

The  Koran  has  been  accused  of  countenancing  sensual 
vice.  Rather  it  bridled  and  brought  within  limits  a  sensu- 
ality which  before  was  unbounded.  It  forbade  and  has 
absolutely  extinguished,  wherever  Islam  is  professed,  the 
bestial  drunkenness  which  is  the  disgrace  of  our  Christian 
English  and  Scottish  towns.  Even  now,  after  centuries  of 
decay,  the  Mussulman  probably  governs  his  life  by  the 
Koran  more  accurately  than  most  Christians  obey  the  Ser- 
mon on  the  Mount  or  the  Ten  Commandments.  In  our 
own  India,  where  the  Moslem  creed  retains  its  relative 
superiority  to  the  superstitions  of  the  native  races,  the  Mus- 
sulman is  a  higher  order  of  being.  Were  the  English  to 
withdraw,  he  would  retake  the  sovereignty  of  the  peninsula 
by  natural  right,  —  not  because  he  has  larger  bones  and 
sinews,  but  by  superiority  of  intellect  and  heart ;  in  other 
words,  because  he  has  a  truer  faith. 

I  said  that  while  Christianity  degenerated  in  the  East 
with  extreme  rapidity,  in  the  West  it  retained  its  firmer 


University  of  St.  Andrew's.  39 

characters.  It  became  the  vitalizing  spirit  of  a  new  organ- 
ization of  society.  All  that  we  call  modern  civilization  in 
a  sense  which  deserves  the  name  is  the  visible  expression 
of  the  transforming  power  of  the  Gospel. 

I  said  also  that  by  the  side  of  the  healthy  influences  of 
regeneration  there  were  sown  along  with  it  the  germs 
of  evil  to  come.  All  living  ideas,  from  the  necessity  of 
things,  take  up  into  their  constitutions  whatever  forces  are 
already  working  round  them.  The  most  ardent  aspirations 
after  truth  will  not  anticipate  knowledge,  and  the  errors 
of  the  imagination  become  consecrated  as  surely  as  the 
purest  impulses  of  conscience.  So  long  as  the  laws  of  the 
physical  world  remain  a  mystery,  the  action  of  all  uncom- 
prehended  phenomena,  the  movements  of  the  heavenly 
bodies,  the  winds  and  storms,  famines,  murrains,  and  hu- 
man epidemics',  are  ascribed  to  the  voluntary  interference 
of  supernatural  beings.  The  belief  in  witches  and  fairies, 
in  spells  and  talismans,  could  not  be  dispelled  by  science, 
for  science  did  not  exist.  The  Church  therefore  entered 
into  competition  with  her  evil  rivals  on  their  own  ground. 
The  saint  came  into  the  field  against  the  enchanters.  The 
powers  of  charm  and  amulets  were  eclipsed  by  martyrs' 
relics,  sacraments,  and  holy  water.  The  magician,  with  the 
devil  at  his  back,  got  to  yield  to  the  divine  powers  im- 
parted to  priests  by  spiritual  descent  in  the  imposition  of 
hands. 

Thus  a  gigantic  system  of  supernaturalism  overspread 
the  entire  Western  world.  There  was  no  deliberate  im- 
position. The  clergy  were  as  ignorant  as  the  people  of 
true  relations  between  natural  cause  and  effect.  Their 
business,  so  far  as  they  were  conscious  of  their  purpose, 
was  to  contend  against  the  works  of  the  devil.  They  saw 
practically  that  they  were  able  to  convert  men  from  vio- 
lence and  impurity  to  pity  and  self-restraint.  Their  very 
humility  forbade  them  to  attribute  such  wonderful  results 
to  their  own  teaching.  When  it  was  universally  believed 


40  •  •  Address  to  the 

that  human  beings  could  make  covenants  with  Satan  by 
signing  their  names  in  blood,  what  more  natural  than  that 
they  should  assume,  for  instance,  that  the  sprinkling  of 
water,  the  inaugurating  ceremony  of  the  purer  and  better 
life,  should  exert  a  mysterious  mechanical  influence  upon 
the  character  ? 

If  regeneration  by  baptism,  however,  with  its  kindred 
imaginations,  was  not  true,  innocence  of  intention  could  not 
prevent  the  natural  consequences  of  falsehood.  Time  went 
on  ;  knowledge  increased ;  doubt  stole  in,  and  with  doubt 
the  passionate  determination  to  preserve  beliefs  at  all  haz- 
ards which  had  grown  too  dear  to  superstition  to  be  parted 
with.  In  the  twelfth  century  the  mystery  called  transub- 
stantiation  had  come  to  be  regarded  with  widespread  mis- 
giving. To  encounter  skepticism,  there  then  arose  for  the 
first  time  what  have  been  called  pious  frauds.  It  was  not 
perceived  that  men  who  lend  themselves  consciously  to  lies, 
with  however  excellent  an  intention,  will  become  eventually 
deliberate  rogues.  The  clergy  doubtless  believed  that  in 
the  consecration  of  the  elements  an  invisible  change  was 
really  and  truly  effected.  But  to  produce  an  effect  on  the 
secular  mind  the  invisible  had  to  be  made  visible.  A  gen- 
eral practice  sprung  up  to  pretend  that  in  the  breaking  of 
the  wafer  real  blood  had  gushed  out ;  real  pieces  of  flesh 
were  found  between  the  fingers.  The  precious  things  thus 
produced  were  awfully  preserved,  and  with  the  Pope's 
blessing  were  deposited  in  shrines,  for  the  strengthening  of 
faith  and  the  confutation  of  the  presumptuous  unbeliever. 

When  a  start  has  once  been  made  on  the  road  of  decep- 
tion, the  after-progress  is  a  rapid  one.     The  desired  effect 

as  not  produced.     Incredulity  increased.     Imposture  ran 
ce  with  unbelief  in  the  vain  hope  of  silencing  inquiry, 
ana  ,.  'th  imposture  all  genuine  love  for  spiritual  or  moral 
truth  disappeared. 

You  all  know  to  what  condition  the  Catholic  Church  had 
sunk  at  the  beginning  of  the  sixteenth  century.     An  inso- 


University  of  St.  Andrew's.  41 

lent  hierarchy,  with  an  army  of  priests  behind  them,  domi- 
nated every  country  in  Europe.  The  Church  was  like  a 
hard  nutshell  round  a  shriveled  kernel.  The  priests,  in 
parting  with  their  sincerity,  had  lost  the  control  over  their 
own  appetites,  which  only  sincerity  can  give.  Profligate  in 
their  own  lives,  they  extended  to  the  laity  the  same  easy 
latitude  which  they  asserted  for  their  own  conduct.  Relig- 
ious duty  no  longer  consisted  in  leading  a  virtuous  life,  but 
in  purchasing  immunity  for  self-indulgence  by  one  of  the 
thousand  remedies  which  Church  officials  were  ever  ready 
to  dispense  at  an  adequate  price. 

The  pleasant  arrangement  came  to  an  end,  —  a  sudden 
and  terrible  one.  Christianity  had  not  been  upon  the 
earth  for  nothing.  The  spiritual  organization  of  the 
Church  was  corrupt  to  the  core  ;  but  in  the  general  awaken- 
ing of  Europe  it  was  impossible  to  conceal  the  contrast  be- 
tween the  doctrines  taught  in  the  Catholic  pulpits  and  the 
creed  of  which  they  were  the  counterfeit.  Again  and 
again  the  gathering  indignation  sputtered  out  to  be  sav- 
agely repressed.  At  last  it  pleased  Pope  Leo,  who  wanted 
money  to  finish  St.  Peter's,  to  send  about  spiritual  hawkers 
with  wares  which  were  called  indulgences,  —  notes  to  be 
presented  at  the  gates  of  purgatory  as  passports  to  the 
easiest  places  there,  —  and  then  Luther  spoke,  and  the 
whirlwind  burst. 

I  can  but  glance  at  the  Reformation  in  Germany.  Lu- 
ther himself  was  one  of  the  grandest  men  that  ever  lived  on 
earth.  Never  was  any  one  more  loyal  to  the  light  that 
was  in  him,  braver,  truer,  or  wider-minded  in  the  noblest 
sense  of  the  word.  The  share  of  the  work  which  fell  to 
him  Luther  accomplished  most  perfectly.  But  he  was  ex- 
ceptionally fortunate  in  one  way,  that  in  Saxony  he  had  his 
sovereign  on  his  side,  and  the  enemy,  however  furious, 
could  not  reach  him  with  fleshly  weapons,  and  could  but 
grind  his  teeth  and  curse.  Other  nations  who  had  caught 
Luther's  spirit  had  to  win  their  liberty  on  harder  terms, 


42  Address  to  the 

and  the  Catholic  churchmen  were  able  to  add  to  their  other 
crimes  the  cruelty  of  fiends.  Princes  and  politicians,  who 
had  State  reasons  for  disliking  popular  outbursts,  sided  with 
the  established  spiritual  authorities.  Heresy  was  assailed 
with  fire  and  sword,  and  a  spirit  harsher  than  Luther's  was 
needed  to  steel  the  convert's  hearts  for  the  trials  which 
came  upon  them.  Lutheranism,  when  Luther  himself  was 
gone,  and  the  thing  which  we  in  England  know  as  Angli- 
canism, were  inclined  to  temporizing  and  half-measures. 
The  Lutheran  congregations  were  but  half  emancipated 
from  superstition,  and  shrank  from  pressing  the  struggle  to 
extremities  ;  and  half-measures  meant  half-heartedness,  con- 
victions which  were  but  half  convictions,  and  truth  with  an 
alloy  of  falsehood.  Half-measures,  however,  would  not 
quench  the  bonfires  of  Philip  of  Spam,  or  raise  men  in 
France  or  Scotland  who  would  meet  crest  to  crest  the 
Princes  of  the  House  of  Lorraine.  The  Reformers  re- 
quired a  position  more  sharply  defined,  and  a  sterner  leader, 
and  that  leader  they  found  in  John  Calvin. 

There  is  no  occasion  to  say  much  of  Calvin's  personal 
history.  His  name  is  now  associated  only  with  gloom  and 
austerity.  Suppose  it  is  true  that  he  rarely  laughed.  He 
had  none  of  Luther's  genial  and  sunny  humor.  Could  they 
have  exchanged  conditions,  Luther's  temper  might  have 
been  somewhat  grimmer,  but  he  would  never  have  been 
entirely  like  Calvin.  Nevertheless,  for  hard  times  hard  men 
are  needed,  and  intellects  which  can  pierce  to  the  roots  where 
truth  and  lies  part  company.  It  fares  ill  with  the  soldiers 
of  religion  when  "  the  accursed  thing "  is  in  their  camp. 
And  this  is  to  be  said  of  Calvin,  that  so  far  as  the  state  of 
knowledge  permitted,  no  eye  could  have  detected  more 
keenly  the  unsound  spots  in  the  received  creed  of  the  Church, 
nor  was  there  reformer  in  Europe  so  resolute  to  excise, 
tear  out,  and  destroy  what  was  distinctly  seen  to  be  false,  — 
so  resolute  to  establish  what  was  true  in  its  place,  and  make 
truth  to  the  last  fibre  of  it  the  rule  of  practical  life. 


University  of  St.  Andreiv's.  43 

Calvinism  as  it  existed  at  Geneva,  and  as  it  endeavored 
to  be  wherever  it  took  root  for  a  century  and  a  half  after 
him,  was  not  a  system  of  opinion,  but  an  attempt  to  make 
the  will  of  God  as  revealed  in  the  Bible  an  authoritative 
guide  for  social  as  well  as  personal  direction.  Men  wonder 
why  the  Calvinists,  being  so  doctrinal,  yet  seemed  to  dwell 
so  much  and  so  emphatically  on  the  Old  Testament.  It  was 
because  in  the  Old  Testament  they  found,  or  thought  they 
found,  a  divine  example  of  national  government,  a  distinct 
indication  of  the  laws  which  men  were  ordered  to  follow, 
with  visible  and  immediate  punishments  attached  to  disobe- 
dience. At  Geneva,  as  for  a  time  in  Scotland,  moral  sins 
were  treated  after  the  example  of  the  Mosaic  law,  as  crimes 
to  be  punished  by  the  magistrate.  "  Elsewhere,"  said  Knox, 
speaking  of  Geneva,  "  the  Word  of  God  is  taught  as  purely, 
but  never  anywhere  have  I  seen  God  obeyed  as  faith- 
fully." 1 

If  it  was  a  dream,  it  was  at  least  a  noble  one.  The 
Calvinists  have  been  called  intolerant.  Intolerance  of  an 
enemy  who  is  trying  to  kill  you  seems  to  me  a  pardonable 
state  of  mind.  It  is  no  easy  matter  to  tolerate  lies  clearly 
convicted  of  being  lies  under  any  circumstances  ;  specially  it 
is  not  easy  to  tolerate  lies  which  strut  about  in  the  name  of 
religion ;  but  there  is  no  reason  to  suppose  that  the  Calvin- 
ists at  the  beginning  would  have  thought  of  meddling  with 
the  Church  if  they  had  been  themselves  let  alone.  They 
would  have  formed  communities  apart.  Like  the  Israelites 
whom  they  wished  to  resemble,  they  would  have  withdrawn 
into  the  wilderness,  —  the  Pilgrim  Fathers  actually  did  so 
withdraw  into  the  wilderness  of  New  England,  —  to  worship 

1  In  burning  witches  the  Calvinists  followed  their  model  too  exactly; 
but  it  is  to  be  remembered  that  they  really  believed  these  poor  creatures 
to  have  made  a  compact  with  Satan.  And,  as  regards  morality,  it  may 
be  doubted  whether  inviting  spirit-rappers  to  dinner,  and  allowing  them  to 
pretend  to  consult  our  dead  relations,  is  very  much  more  innocent.  The 
first  method  is  but  excess  of  indignation  with  evil;  the  second  is  compla- 
cent toyiug  with  it. 


44  Address  to  the 

the  God  of  their  fathers,  and  would  have  left  argument  and 
example  to  work  their  natural  effect.  Norman  Leslie  did 
not  kill  Cardinal  Beaton  down  in  the  castle  yonder  because 
he  was  a  Catholic,  but  because  he  was  a  murderer.  The 
Catholics  chose  to  add  to  their  already  incredible  creed  a 
fresh  article,  that  they  were  entitled  to  hang  and  burn  those 
who  differed  from  them  ;  and  in  this  quarrel  the  Calvinists, 
Bible  in  hand,  appealed  to  the  God  of  battles.  They  grew 
harsher,  fiercer, — if  you  please,  more  fanatical.  It  was 
extremely  natural  that  they  should.  They  dwelt,  as  pious 
men  are  apt  to  dwell  in  suffering  and  sorrow,  on  the  all- 
disposing  power  of  Providence.  Their  burden  grew  lighter 
as  they  considered  that  God  had  so  determined  that  they 
must  bear  it.  But  they  attracted  to  their  ranks  almost 
every  man  in  Western  Europe  that  "  hated  a  lie."  They 
were  crushed  down,  but  they  rose  again.  They  were 
splintered  and  torn,  but  no  power  could  bend  or  melt  them. 
They  had  many  faults ;  let  him  that  is  without  sin  cast  a 
stone  at  them.  They  abhorred  as  no  body  of  men  ever 
more  abhorred  all  conscious  mendacity,  all  impurity,  all 
moral  wrong  of  every  kind  so  far  as  they  could  recognize  it. 
Whatever  exists  at  this  moment  in  England  and  Scotland  of 
conscientious  fear  of  doing  evil  is  the  remnant  of  the  con- 
victions which  were  branded  by  the  Calvinists  into  the  peo- 
ple's hearts.  Though  they  failed  to  destroy  Romanism, 
though  it  survives  and  may  survive  long  as  an  opinion,  they 
drew  its  fangs  ;  they  forced  it  to  abandon  that  detestable 
principle,  that  it  was  entitled  to  murder  those  who  dissented 
from  it.  Nay,  it  may  be  said  that  by  having  shamed 
Romanism  out  of  its  practical  corruption  the  Calvinists  ena- 
bled it  to  revive. 

Why,  it  is  asked,  were  they  so  dogmatic  ?  Why  could 
they  not  be  contented  to  teach  men  reasonably  and  quietly 
that  to  be  wicked  was  to  be  miserable,  that  in  the  indul- 
gence of  immoderate  passions  they  would  find  less  happi- 
ness than  in  adhering  to  the  rules  of  justice,  or  yielding  to 


University  of  St.  Andrew's.  45 

the  impulses  of  more  generous  emotions  ?  And,  for  the 
rest,  why  could  they  not  let  fools  be  fools,  and  leave  opinion 
free  about  matters  of  which  neither  they  nor  others  could 
know  anything  certain  at  all  ? 

I  reply  that  it  is  not  true  that  goodness  is  synonymous 
with  happiness.  The  most  perfect  being  who  ever  trod  the 
soil  of  this  planet  was  called  the  Man  of  Sorrows.  If  hap- 
piness means  absence  of  care  and  inexperience  of  painful 
emotion,  the  best  securities  for  it  are  a  hard  heart  and  a 
good  digestion.  If  morality  has  no  better  foundation  than 
a  tendency  to  promote  happiness,  its  sanction  is  but  a  feeble 
uncertainty.  If  it  be  recognized  as  part  of  the  constitution 
of  the  world,  it  carries  with  it  its  right  to  command ;  and 
those  who  see  clearly  what  it  is,  will  insist  on  submission 
to  it,  and  derive  authority  from  the  distinctness  of  their 
recognition,  to  enforce  submission  where  their  power  ex- 
tends. Philosophy  goes  no  further  than  probabilities,  and 
in  every  assertion  keeps  a  doubt  in  reserve.  Compare  the 
remonstrance  of  the  casual  passer-by  if  a  mob  of  ruffians  are 
misbehaving  themselves  in  the  street  with  the  downright 
energy  of  the  policeman  who  strikes  in  fearlessly,  one 
against  a  dozen,  as  a  minister  of  the  law.  There  is  the 
same  difference  through  life  between  the  man  who  has  a 
sure  conviction  and  him  whose  thoughts  never  rise  beyond 
a  "  perhaps." 

Any  fanatic  may  say  as  much,  it  is  again  answered,  for 
the  wildest  madness.  But  the  elementary  principles  of 
morality  are  not  forms  of  madness.  No  one  pretends  that 
it  is  uncertain  whether  truth  is  better  than  falsehood,  or  jus- 
tice than  injustice.  Speculation  can  eat  away  the  sanction, 
superstition  can  erect  rival  duties,  but  neither  one  nor  the 
other  pretends  to  touch  the  fact  that  these  principles  exist, 
and  the  very  essence  and  life  of  all  great  religious  move- 
ments is  the  recognition  of  them  as  of  authority  and  as  part 
of  the  eternal  framework  of  things. 

There  is,  however,  it  must  be  allowed,  something  in  what 


46  Address  to  the 

these  objectors  say.  The  power  of  Calvinism  has  waned. 
The  discipline  which  it  once  aspired  to  maintain  has  fallen 
slack.  Desire  for  ease  and  self-indulgence  drag  forever  in 
quiet  times  at  the  heel  of  noble  aspirations,  while  the  shadow 
struggles  to  remain  and  preserve  its  outline  when  the  sub- 
stance is  passing  away.  The  argumentative  and  logical 
side  of  Calvin's  mind  has  created  once  more  a  fatal  opportu- 
nity for  a  separation  between  opinion  and  morality.  We 
have  learnt,  as  we  say,  to  make  the  best  of  both  worlds,  to 
take  political  economy  for  the  rule  of  our  conduct,  and  to 
relegate  religion  into  the  profession  of  orthodox  doctrines. 
Systems  have  been  invented  to  explain  the  inexplicable. 
Metaphors  have  been  translated  into  formulas,  and  para- 
doxes intelligible  to  emotion  have  been  thrust  upon  the 
acceptance  of  the  reason ;  while  duty,  the  loftiest  of  all  sen- 
sations which  we  are  permitted  to  experience,  has  been 
resolved  into  the  acceptance  of  a  scheme  of  salvation  for  the 
individual  human  soul.  Was  it  not  written  long  ago,  "  He 
that  will  save  his  soul  shall  lose  it  "  ?  If  we  think  of  relig- 
ion only  as  a  means  of  escaping  what  we  call  the  wrath  to 
come,  we  shall  not  escape  it ;  we  are  already  under  it ;  we 
are  under  the  burden  of  death,  for  we  care  only  for  our- 
selves. 

This  was  not  the  religion  of  your  fathers ;  this  was  not 
the  Calvinism  which  overthrew  spiritual  wickedness,  and 
hurled  kings  from  their  thrones,  and  purged  England  and 
Scotland,  for  a  time  at  least,  of  lies  and  charlatanry.  Cal- 
vinism was  the  spirit  which  rises  in  revolt  against  untruth  ; 
the  spirit  which,  as  I  have  shown  you,  has  appeared,  and 
reappeared,  and  in  due  time  will  appear  again,  unless  God 
be  a  delusion,  and  man  be  as  the  beasts  that  perish.  For  it 
is  but  the  inflashing  upon  the  conscience  of  the  nature  and 
origin  of  the  laws  by  which  mankind  are  governed,  —  laws 
which  exist,  whether  we  acknowledge  them  or  whether  we 
deny  them,  and  will  have  their  way,  to  our  weal  or  woe, 
according  to  the  attitude  in  which  we  please  to  place  our- 


University  of  St.  Andrew's.  47 

selves  towards  them,  —  inherent,  like  the  laws  of  gravity,  in 
the  nature  of  things,  not  made  by  us,  not  to  be  altered  by 
us,  but  to  be  discerned  and  obeyed  by  us  at  our  everlasting 
peril. 

Nay,  rather  the  law  of  gravity  is  but  a  property  of  mate- 
rial things,  and  matter  and  all  that  belongs  to  it  may  one 
day  fade  away  like  a  cloud  and  vanish.  The  moral  law  is 
inherent  in  eternity.  "  Heaven  and  earth  shall  pass  away, 
but  my  word  shall  not  pass  away."  The  law  is  the  expres- 
sion of  the  will  of  the  Spirit  of  the  Universe.  The  spirit  in 
man  which  corresponds  to  and  perceives  the  Eternal  Spirit 
is  part  of  its  essence,  and  immortal  as  it  is  immortal.  The 
Calvinists  called  the  eye  within  us  the  Inspiration  of  the 
Almighty.  Aristotle  could  see  that  it  was  not  of  earth,  or 
any  creature  of  space  and  Jime  :  — 

6  yap  i/ous  (he  says)  ovo-i'a  Tts  ovcra.  eoiKej/ 


What  the  thing  is  which  we  call  ourselves  we  know  not. 
It  may  be  true  —  I  for  one  care  not  if  it  be  —  that  •  the 
descent  of  our  mortal  bodies  may  be  traced  through  an 
ascending  series  to  some  glutinous  jelly  formed  on  the  rocks 
of  the  primeval  ocean.  It  is  nothing  to  me  how  the  Maker 
of  me  has  been  pleased  to  construct  the  organized  substance 
which  I  call  my  body.  It  is  mine,  but  it  is  not  me.  The 
voB?,  the  intellectual  spirit,  being  an  ouo-t'a,  —  an  essence,  — 
we  believe  to  be  an  imperishable  something  which  has  been 
engendered  in  us  from  another  source.  As  Wordsworth 
says  :  — 

"  Our  birth  is  but  a  sleep  and  a  forgetting; 

The  soul  that  rises  in  us,  our  life's  star, 
Hath  elsewhere  had  its  setting, 

And  cometh  from  afar  : 
Not  in  entire  forgetfulness, 
Not  in  utter  nakedness, 

But  trailing  clouds  of  glory  do  we  come, 

From  heaven,  which  is  our  home." 


12O445 


